When I Open the Shop

By Romesh Dissanayake

In his small noodle shop in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, a young chef obsessively juliennes carrots. Nothing is going according to plan: the bills are piling up, his mother is dead, and there are strangers in his kitchen. The ancestors are watching closely. Told through a series of brilliant interludes and jump cuts, When I open the shop is sometimes blackly funny, sometimes angry and sometimes lyrical, and sometimes - as a car soars off the road on a horror road trip to the Wairarapa - it takes flight into surrealism. A glimpse into immigrant life in Aotearoa, this is a highly entertaining, surprising and poignant debut novel about grief, struggle and community.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1776921305
• ISBN13: 9781776921300
• Release Date: April 2024
• Publisher: Te Herenga Waka University Press
• Length: 224 Pages