The latest addition to my website is Shalom Auslander‘s Mother for Dinner. This is a wickedly funny satire on identity politics and racism. Our hero is Seventh Seltzer and he is a Cannibal American (CA). The CA first immigrated to the US in 1918 though no-one seems to be sure where the Old Country is or, indeed, what it was like (there are two competing myths). Seventh is the seventh son of a woman the children merely know as Mudd – we never know her real name – and she is fiercely protective of the CA traditions and fiercely racist towards other groups. However, there is one tradition the CA have kept. When someone dies the immediate family has to eat the corpse. Mudd is preparing herself for death by stuffing herself with hamburgers. Her children, most of whom have married people who are not CA, are naturally reluctant to eat her but they discover if they do not they will not inherit the proceeds of the sale of the large Brooklyn house. Many of them have financial problems and need the money. What to do? Call Unclish, their father’s brother and keep of the flame and take Mudd’s body to the long since abandoned CA University and prepare for the feast. The book is very funny and holds nothing sacred though some will find it offensive.