Two decades ago, to the mystification of family and friends, Anosh Irani left India for Vancouver, Canada, a city and a country completely foreign to him, hoping to reinvent himself as a writer. He did just that, publishing critically acclaimed novels and plays set in his beloved hometown of Mumbai. But this uprooting did not come without a steep price – one that Irani, for the first time, directly explores in this book.

In Gibberish’s seven, surprising stories, Irani shows, through a prism of unforgettable characters, what it means to live between two worlds: India and Canada. Among the people we meet are: a swimming instructor determined to reenact John Cheever’s iconic short story “The Swimmer” in the pools of Mumbai; a famous Indian chef who breaks down on a New York talk show; a gangster’s wife who believes a penguin at the Mumbai zoo is the reincarnation of her lost child; and a kindly sweets-shop owner whose hope for a new life in Canada leads to a terrible choice. The book starts and ends with a gorgeous, emotionally raw “translation” to the page of the author’s own life between worlds, blurring the line between fiction and fact.