In 2009, after several years in China, journalist Pallavi Aiyar moved to
Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union, to discover a Europe
plagued by a financial crisis, and unsure of its place in a world where new
Asian challengers are eroding its old and comfortable certainties. With a
lively mix of memoir, reportage and analysis, Aiyar takes the reader on
a romp across the continent as she meets workaholic Indian diamond
merchants in Antwerp, upstart Chinese wine barons in Bordeaux, Sikh
farmhands in the Italian countryside, and Indian engineers running
offshore energy turbines in Belgium. In the Europe of today everything is
in a flux, as she discovers through conversations with Muslim immigrants
struggling to define their identities, the austere bosses of Germany’s
worldbeating companies, and bewildered Eurocrats struggling to save the
EU from splitting apart. Examining the diverse challenges the continent
faces today-among them, bloated welfare states, the accommodation of
Islam, the European ambitions of Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs, and
the fissures that threaten to break up this union of diverse nations-Punjabi
Parmesan takes a panoramic look at Europe’s firstworld crisis from a
unique India-China perspective.

About the Author

Award-winning foreign correspondent Pallavi Aiyar has reported from China and Europe for over a decade. Her China travelogue, Smoke and Mirrors, won the Vodafone-Crossword Popular Book Award for 2008. Her novel, Chinese Whiskers, a modern fable set in China, was published in America, Italy, Belgium and India. She is also the lead author of the Lonely Planet guide China: For the Indian Traveller. Pallavi Aiyar is now based in Jakarta, Indonesia.