“PASSING,” according to Lipika Pelham, is “the act of living or imitating a life belonging to an identity other than the one you have been assigned by society.”

[[{"fid":"27285","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]But as the book Passing’s subtitle suggests, this is not just another survey of the contemporary celebratory craze for a recognition of individuality in our mass-conscious world. The author recognises that the quest for identity, an essential facet of humanity, has “no absolute markers to measure our being or belonging.”

A documentary film-maker and much-travelled ex-BBC foreign correspondent, Pelham is a Bangladeshi Hindu who married an English Jewish NGO worker who now lives between London and Jerusalem and has become accustomed to the stresses of reinventing herself to fit in with social preconceptions and expectations.