Bapsi Sidhwa was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and spent her childhood in Lahore. She has written four novels, including Cracking India, The Crow Eaters and The Bride. She now lives in Houston and travels frequently to Pakistan. The Crimson spoke recently with Sidhwa about her latest novel, An American Brat. Sidhwa will read from her book at the Cambridge Public Library tonight at 6:00 p.m.

Question: What kind of audience do you feel that you have tapped into? Do you have one in mind when you write and does it change from a novel like Cracking India or An American Brat, which perhaps, is more directed towards an American audience?

Answer: No, you see, I already have an audience in India and Pakistan. My books are pirated wholesale in Pakistan and they have been read for years and they are sold very well so I have this huge, huge readership there. In India, I was amazed, I was invited by all the universities in Delhi in February this year, last year...this conference, that conference. I was quite astonished at what a lot had been written about me, how much I'd been read. So, a writer writes to be read and I am read and taught a lot in America, read and taught a lot in Britain. I am translated into French, translated into German and well whichever language, wherever, whoever wants to read me, that's my targeted audience. If it's an Eskimo country, or an African country, wherever.

Q: Your new work may have been likened to Bharati Mukherjee's work--the female protagonist from the subcontinent who comes to the U.S. and confronts issues of her sexuality and freedom--

A: I think I started writing long before Bharati Mukherjee was on the scene even.

Q: Have people made the comparison?

A: Fortunately, nobody has made that comparison. I've been compared to Jane Austen and a whole lot of people and even then, I feel quite humiliated because I write a lot more vigorously than them, but nobody has compared me to her. She writes quite differently from me.

Q:Your work deals heavily with the Parsi community in Pakistan, though not exclusively. Would you like to be viewed as the literary voice of the Parsi community?

A: No, no. My book, The Bride has not even one Parsi character. And in Cracking India, I use the perspective of a Parsi child, but Hindu characters, Sikh characters, Muslim characters are pivotal to the story. I would not like to be seen just as a Parsi writer. For example, in The Crow-eaters, the characters are all Parsi. But all my friends in India and Pakistan who are not Parsi say, "Ah, we know who you have written about. You have written about my mother-in-law." So you see I don't think it means anything if a character is a parsi or a Christian or Hindu. They are human beings primarily and they relate to the reader as a human being. We share experiences.

Q: But since the Parsis are such a miniscule community and are written about so seldomly, even in the subcontinent---

A: Initially, yes. With The Bride, I felt like I wanted to talk about the tribals, about the people hidden away by hills. Similarly about the Parsis, I felt, "Here's this endangered little species and they have some charm," and I wanted to tell a story about them. So I said, "Let me write about them," because as far as I knew there's nothing written about them, so it was the first book about Parsis as such. I think the only other book was at that time a book for young adults by Farokh Dande called Poona Company.

Q: Is it important to you to stake out a Pakistani voice separate from a general subcontinental voice?

A: No, no. What is important to me is to be an entertaining writer, a readable writer. If they say, "I want to know about Pakistan," I would be very happy if they read The Bride or read The Crow Eaters because it does tell them a lot about Pakistan, Lahore, whatever. And, in fact, any American who comes to Pakistan is almost ordered to read the two books, The Bride and The Crow Eaters. I mean, it's part of their syllabus or something like that. And if somebody wanted to know about the Parsis and read it, I would be very happy, but I think basically they are both rollicking good stories. I wouldn't want to represent just one voice. I am happy these are characters which can speak to a cross-cultural section of people, translatable into any language, any people, any culture.

Q: What about someone like Sara Suleri, has she been successful in creating a specifically Pakistani story in Meatless Days?

A: Oh good God! What a question! That is about Kinnaird College and part of it is the schoolgirl essay and part of it is romantic love and okay, that's fine. But I have written four novels and you cannot compare me with that.