SOURCE: Rudm, Frank. Review of The Crow Eaters, by Bapsi Sidhwa. Spectator 245, no. 7945 (18 October 1980): 25.

In the following excerpt, Rudm offers a positive assessment of The Crow Eaters, calling the novel “a wholly charming passage to India.”

[The Crow Eaters] is about the vicissitudes of a Parsi family in Lahore. The action takes place between 1900 and the second World war. The title is taken from an Indian proverb: Anyone who talks too much is said to have eaten crows. Faredoon Junglewalla (Freddy for short) is never at a loss for words, or, for that matter, does he lack ideas, nefarious though they may be. Freddy is an engaging rogue, handsome, dulcet-voiced, and consumed with absurd vanities. The greatest thorn in his flesh is Jerbanoo, his mother-in-law, who has been unwillingly brought thousands of miles to Lahore from a Tower of Silence where a devout Parsi must be buried. She...