Away

The Indian Writer as an Expatriate

By: Amitava Kumar (Editor)

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Paperback | 20 October 2003 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
426 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 2.21

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In the past twenty years, Indian writers have won wide praise in the West. Many of the best live outside the Subcontinent - in England, the United States, and Canada. "Away" brings together great writing by figures from South Asia who give voice to the experience of the exile and the emigrant. R.K. Narayan writes of his first visit to America. Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, writes of his first trip by airplane. Salman Rushdie eats "the eggs of love" in a Sandinista camp in Nicaragua. V.S. Naipaul describes his sister's funeral ceremony in Trinidad, while the poet Sarojini Naidu sends love letters home to her husband. The memoirist Ved Mehta recounts applying for an American visa. The rising politician Jawaharlal Nehru asks for news from India as he travels across the world campaigning for freedom. This star-studded list of contributors also includes Hanif Kureishi, Rohinton Mistry, Meera Syal, and others. Amitava Kumar's introduction beautifully sets out the complex feelings that animate the writings that follow. "Away" is a feast.

Industry Reviews

"Indians have been describing their passage to the western world, and their experiences and encounters there, since the last years of the eighteenth century. This invaluable anthology is an antidote to the idea that the traffic in description was only one-way. Here the East reports on the West, vividly, comically, enlighteningly." -- Ian Jack, Granta
"As a literary critic, memoirist and social historian, Amitava Kumar is a rare and bracing presence in the world of Indian writing in English." -- Pankaj Mishra
"The book is full of such treasures. My only regret is that Kumar couldn't find room for the delightful Jumpha Lahiri, who is such a lovely writer." -- Courier Mail/Australian newspaper
"Its juxtaposition of the likes of Chaudhari, Rushdie, Tagore, Gandhi, and Rohinton Mistry create a delightful atmosphere for a non-Indian reader to start from, and indulge in. The book is full of treasures." -- Rosemary Sorensen, The Courier-Mail
"Unlike many anthologies of its sort, Away's disparate pieces coalesce into something far greater than the sum of its parts, no mean feat given the quality of those parts. [...] Enthralling and upsetting in equal measure." -- James Bradley, The Age

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