Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture: 8 (Peter Lang Ltd.) - Softcover

Chaudhuri, Amit

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1906165017 ISBN 13: 9781906165017

Publisher: Peter Lang Ltd, 2008

Synopsis

The essays assembled in "Clearing a Space", written over the last fifteen years, cover an astonishing range of subjects. The writer treats himself as a specimen for an exploration of what it means to be a modern Indian in relation to the West. Personal memoir gives readers a glance into a nation's history; his relationship to the West provides insight into India's national relationship to the West; and, his struggle to define 'Indianness' for himself becomes a paradigm of searching for Indian identity.With the same elegance and intelligence for which the author has become known, Chaudhuri writes anecdotally in these essays about Indian popular culture and high culture, travel and location in Paris, Bombay, Dublin, Calcutta and Berlin, empire and nationalism, Indian and Western cinema, music, art and literature, politics, race, cosmopolitanism, urban landscapes, Hollywood and Bollywood, Anglophone India, internationalism, globalisation, the Indian English tradition that pre-dates Rushdie, post-colonialism and much more.

About this title

Review:

«This extraordinary and wide-ranging collection, through a series of highly-focussed aperçus, puts in question the key terms of self-understanding of much modern literature ... a treasure trove of acute and thought-provoking perceptions.» (Charles Taylor, McGill University)
«Amit Chaudhuri's collected essays and reviews constitute an intellectual autobiography of the first importance.» (Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Global Distinguished Professor of English at NYU)
«Amit Chaudhuri's career as a novelist has proceeded in tandem with an ongoing engagement as a robust critic and thinker and musician. In these essays breadth of knowledge and the fluency of thought are held in perfect balance. 'Clearing a Space' is a compendious, quietly passionate, rigorous and unfailingly eloquent collection.» (Geoff Dyer)
«In this thought-provoking and compelling set of essays Amit Chaudhuri teases out the implications of polarities that may seem fixed and suggests new ways of exploring the narratives of Indian modernity. He asks hard questions of himself as well as others, and he engages us as readers with the warmth and acuity of his observations across a wonderful range of writing.» (Gillian Beer)
«The essays of Amit Chaudhuri are really a wonderful key to the understanding of the vitality and specificity of Indian modernity ... a fascinating contribution to the understanding of this great civilization and its modern transformations. They are worth the serious attention of scholars in the social sciences as well as the humanities.» (Shmuel Eisenstadt, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
«Whether making music or writing prose, Amit Chaudhuri offers a distinctive spiritual history of modernity. These collected meditations - which are as elegantly fastidious as they are intellectually adventurous - confirm him as one of our most provocative and consistently interesting artists.» (Pankaj Mishra)

From the Publisher:

Reviews for Clearing a Space:
This extraordinary and wide-ranging collection, through a series of highly-focussed aperçus, puts in question the key terms of self-understanding of much modern literature: 'modernism' and 'post-modernity', for instance; and this from the standpoint of an insightful observer who has moved between more than one Indian and several Euro-American vantage points. The book offers among other things a fascinating insight into the specificity of certain Indian itineraries within the multiple modernities we inhabit today; including that of a largely unrecognized 'secular spirituality'. This and much else make this book a treasure trove of acute and thought-provoking perceptions - Charles Taylor, McGill University

Amit Chaudhuri's career as a novelist has proceeded in tandem with an ongoing engagement as a robust critic and thinker and musician. In these essays breadth of knowledge and the fluency of thought are held in perfect balance. Clearing a Space is a compendious, quietly passionate, rigorous and unfailingly eloquent collection - Geoff Dyer

In this thought-provoking and compelling set of essays Amit Chaudhuri teases out the implications of polarities that may seem fixed and suggests new ways of exploring the narratives of Indian modernity. He asks hard questions of himself as well as others, and he engages us as readers with the warmth and acuity of his observations across a wonderful range of writing - Gillian Beer

The essays of Amit Chaudhuri are really a wonderful key to the understanding of the vitality and specificity of Indian modernity ... a fascinating contribution to the understanding of this great civilization and its modern transformations. They are worth the serious attention of scholars in the social sciences as well as the humanities - Shmuel Eisenstadt, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

About this edition

• Publisher: Peter Lang Ltd
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1906165017
• ISBN 13: 9781906165017
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 332