The Tapioca Seller and Other Stories  (Paperback, Vincent Marias)

The Tapioca Seller and other stories is a collection of fourteen stories. Most of them adapted from real life-incidents, there is a character in the stories with which we can identify ourselves. From the octogenarian Nagaraj to school-girl Suma, it covers the lives of people of different ages and times, in different circumstances and situations, engrossed in different tasks and professions from a deep sea fisherman, a budding footballer, a flower seller, an amateur magician, a runaway, a dancer in the Kingdom of Travancore to the tapioca seller. The stories cover a range of emotion and ambience, from the light-hearted story of the adventure of the love-life of a bus conductress to the gruesome black magic ritual in the quest for hidden treasure. One can relive the thrill of receiving our first pay check, the thrill of a little girl learning to ride a cycle, the dreams of a poor flower seller, and the macabre incident of the attempts to recover hidden treasure, the life and loves of fisher folks in a fishing village, the hopeless love of a dancer for the king, the odyssey of a teenage runaway, the hilarious travails of a magician trying to capture a roaming spirit and the never-say-die, indomitable spirit of a tapioca seller.