Bombay--London--New York (Routledge Studies in Health and Social Welfare) - Hardcover

Kumar, Amitava

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415942101 ISBN 13: 9780415942102

Publisher: Routledge, 2002

Synopsis

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

About this title

Review:

"[Kumar's] literary criticism is effortless and illuminating....his analysis of the Indian underclass and social unrest is incisive. When Kumar is personal and honest he is most effective. His observations on Naipaul and Rushdie, in particular, are balanced and insightful. Kumar is clearly capable of great narrative."
-"Persimmon
"This intriguing book illuminates both the writers examined and the act of writing as a means of re-creating the past. Highly recommended for literary collections and all large public and academic libraries."
-"Library Journal, November 15, 2002
...".[a] wilful, engaging book on Indian fiction in English, where it is always clear that there is a relationship between literary journeys and those embarked on in real life, between the flow of words and the movement of people and things, and between the reader's act of finding the literary centre and the writer's task of illuminating the periphery."
-"Times Literary Supplement
""Bombay-London-New York is a riveting book. Kumar's passion for his subject matter is infectious. But he is doing much more than simply providing illuminating insights into Indian cultural life in the West. He is showing a way forward for cultural criticism, with the critic as an insightful storyteller. It is the wave of the future."
-"Independent
"Kumar is a skilled storyteller. He manages to pull the different strands of his narrative - the autobiography, the anxieties of the writer in exile, the evolution of indigenous varieties of Indianness in London and New York - with considerable success. His prose is always elegant, his ideas always pulsate with energy and his humanity shines through everypage."
-"Independent

Synopsis:

When Amitava Kumar left Patna, India, he envisioned himself as an up-and-coming citizen of the world, leaving behind the confines of Indian traditions. Yet like the wave of exiles that preceded him, he found that once we leave our past, we are defined by it: in the U.S. he is pigeonholed by his appearance and quizzed about saris and arranged marriages. "There is no beginning that is a blank page," writes Kumar. Circling the three capitals of the Indian diaspora, Bombay-London-New York captures the contours of the expatriate experience, touching on the themes of abandonment, nostalgia, and exile that have powered some of the most prominent Indian writers today - Naipaul, Rushdie, Roy, Kureishi, as well as E.M. Forster and Gandhi. With resonant, poetic language and a storyteller's sensibility, Kumar explores the works of these writers through the lens of his own life as an immigrant and writer. As their fiction reveals, the past of the expatriate is mythical, shaped by memory and loss. With tales of life in India and London and meditations on the form Indian fiction gives to the lives of those who read about it, this is a sweeping, passionate search to find one's own story in the stories of others.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0415942101
• ISBN 13: 9780415942102
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 290