The Wedding — Imraan Coovadia

Set in India and South Africa, The Wedding joins Ismet Nassin, a clerk of modest prospects from Bombay, and Khateja, a village beauty he marries on the very day he spies her from the window of his train. Matrimony happens fast, love lags behind. Khateja is willful, difficult, and misanthropic -- in short, highly desirable. Ismet is in for the battle of his life.

Based upon the story of his grandparents and his own upbringing in Durban, South Africa, Imraan Coovadia has written a brilliantly funny and tender first novel -- an alternately poignant and hilarious story about the choices we make and the homes that we build.

The Wedding is a witty and wonderful subcontinental The Taming of the Shrew.