Point of View

For the most part, The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais is written in the first-person from the perspective of the story’s protagonist, Hassan Haji. However, there is an unusual element in the way this story is told. Although Hassan tells the story, the perspective at times drifts from Hassan telling his own story to Hassan telling the story as a narrator, from a third-person perspective. He relates what actions people took and what thoughts they had even though he wasn’t present and couldn’t read the minds of the other characters. It drifts back and forth between Hassan’s first-person narrative to a more omniscient third-person perspective. It was undoubtedly done by design. It is an unusual style, but it does not detract from the story.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is author Richard Morais' first novel. He was a senior editor at Forbes...