Father Cabraal’s Recipe for Love Cake explores the complex legacies of colonial exploitation and slavery in a tropical island in the Indian Ocean (a loosely fictionalised Sri Lanka). Two compelling stories run in parallel:

In the 21st century, Katharina Silvaria, formerly a tv news journalist and war reporter based in London, now lives on the island, in an ancient house she has recently inherited. Damaged by her experiences as a war reporter and seeking a quiet life, Katharina earns a living by baking and exporting cakes made to an old recipe she found in the house. Amid one of the periodic rebellions against a repressive and unjust government, wounded fugitive Rajiv Almeida takes refuge in Katharina’s house, and she reluctantly agrees to shelter him from the police.

In the late 17th century, significant areas of the island are controlled by a powerful European trading enterprise known only as The Company. Santiago De Melo, one of the first Europeans to reside in the island Fort, builds an imposing house for himself and, defying convention, chooses as his bride a local woman, Maria, who has good reason to hate The Company. Unusually, Maria has inherited from her lover – and now runs – one of the best pepper farms in the area. But the casually brutal deputy governor of the island is determined to seize control of its lucrative pepper trade, and tragedy follows.