At the neoliberal table: Who eats and who gets eaten in ‘Carnivore’

K. Anis Ahmed's Carnivore serves up a daring and disturbing literary dish. The novel is part crime thriller, part immigrant narrative, and part sociopolitical allegory. The author dares to mix genres to pursue a culinary metaphor: the best way to get to someone's heart is through their palate. The same can be said for a migrant trying to win the hearts of the members of his adopted country. But what if, in an age of overconsumption, the palate craves more—meat from the grey zone? The desire to have a taste of the taboo can test humans (pun intended) and form the basis of this transgressive noir.

The plot sizzles with the American dream of a Bangladeshi immigrant who shores up in New York with a fake Diversity Visa. The protagonist, Kash, moves from the memory-haunted alleys of Dhaka's Dhanmondi to the glitzy  eateries of New York as the author weaves a braided narrative of daring ambition and desperate gambits. Along the way, he also explores the psychological complexity of a diverse range of immigrants. He does so through his signature style of layering flashbacks, parallel settings, and moments of lyrical reflection. He crosses borders, both geographical and emotional, with the ease of a cosmopolitan man and urbane wit. From the very Breaking Bad kind of start, Carnivore proves to be an intoxicating novel that grips the reader by the throat and doesn't let go.

The protagonist has a rather normal childhood in Dhanmondi that belies family dysfunction and sexual taboos. The surface normalcy is fractured when we get to know his carnal secrets: thwarted love at 15 but twisted further by an unexpected—or unknown—sexual rivalry with, of all people, his father. The older brother turns to humble entrepreneurship with a tehari shop, while Kash prepares to leave it all behind.

The American Dream is tickled first by American TV shows, a Cold War era largesse, but blossoms more due to an English teacher who is a rare evangelist for America in a time when it was more in vogue to be left-leaning. The "secondhand Americana" is achieved through forged documents. The hidden support structure of the deshi community in Queens, NY, helps him settle down and eventually enter the restaurant business. But his rejection of his deshi community is evident in his desire to go beyond curry-in-a-hurry to a much more exotic menu for the upscale New Yorkers. He partners with a friend whom he assumes comes from old money.

To say Ahmed is fearless in his style is an understatement. His prose switches from the nostalgic past of Dhaka childhood to the well-researched gourmet culture of New York's high-end kitchens. His cultural commentary refuses to look away from class betrayal or moral decay.

To keep the business afloat, Kash borrows from an East European loanshark, misses payment schedules, and becomes a prey to the predatory lender. The social cannibalism turns out to be literal as Kash loses his pinky finger as a punishment. The mortal wound, or rather the severed pinky, inspires a sick epiphany—Kash cooks up a plot. And soon after this injury, he learns of a secretive billionaires' dining club which becomes his potential ticket out from his debt burden.

His partner in crime is his life partner, Helen: a blonde former model who, like Kash, is an outsider to the swankier world of New York, and brings her own darkness to the table. She is not simply a sidekick or love interest but recalls a lost Wild Wild West which resonates with Kash— they feed each others' yearning for recognition, and revenge. Together, they become a new kind of Bonnie and Clyde: Bangladeshi grit, American depravity or vice versa.

Ahmed doesn't simply tell a crime story. He interrogates capitalism, hedonism, identity, and consumption. Carnivore is about who gets to eat and who gets eaten. Ahmed gives examples from myths from different cultures to reflect on the price of assimilation. There are stories of the grotesque lengths they go to belong. The bitter irony in America, it turns out, is that sometimes the immigrant must serve himself up to survive.

To say Ahmed is fearless in his style is an understatement. His prose switches from the nostalgic past of Dhaka childhood to the well-researched gourmet culture of New York's high-end kitchens. His cultural commentary refuses to look away from class betrayal or moral decay.

The novel has all the elements of joining the streaming era; Carnivore begs for a Netflix adaptation to join the ranks of Hannibal, Breaking Bad, and The White Lotus. But even without the screen, the story sears itself into your memory with its visceral, unflinching cost-benefits of the American Dream seen through Bangladeshi eyes.

Dr Shamsad Mortuza is a professor of English at Dhaka University, and former pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB).