“Becoming Indian,” Foreign Policy, April 8, 2024.
“Writing a Novel with Pictures,” Hazlitt, February 28, 2024.
“I Was Still Reporting to My Father…,” Literary Hub, February 27, 2024.
“Sach Chhuchha Hota Hai, (Rules of Writing),” Literary Activism, 2024.
“Particulate Matter,” Granta.com, 2023.
“Many Words for Heat, Many Words for Hate,” Granta 162, 2023.
“Dear Editor,” HEAT, Series 3 Number 6.
“Conversation,” Outlook Magazine, January 30, 2023.
“Through the Lens of an American Icon,” Oprah Daily, November 15, 2022.
“The Legacy of Salman Rushdie,” Oprah Daily, August 19, 2022.
“India at 75,” Contribution to PEN anthology of Indian writers, August 15, 2022. (Also at LitHub.)
“An Open Letter to Hadi Matar,” Indian Express, August 14, 2022.
“Different Strokes,” Bookforum, June/July/August 2022.
“Shiva Naipaul’s Notebook,” Hindustan Times, May 12, 2022.
“Amitava Kumar Finds the Breath of Life,” The Seen and the Unseen Podcast with Amit Varma, Feb 20, 2022.
“Art and Lies,” Bookforum, Dec/Jan/Feb 2022.
“As If A Girl Matters,” Outlook Magazine, November 15, 2021.
“Lies We Tell Ourselves,” Indian Express, October 24, 2021.
“Writing Should Be A Visual Art” The Atlantic, October 6, 2021.
“Fiction to Fight Fake News,” LitHub, October 5, 2021.
“On Voice,” Missouri Review Online, September 15, 2021.
“Letter of Recommendation,” New York Times Magazine, May 4, 2021.
“On painting to remember the Delhi riots,” Mint Lounge, February 23, 2021.
“Authors Distill Their Writing Advice to Just a Few Words,” The New York Times Book Review, August 14, 2020.
“The Patterns of Our Grief,” The Indian Express, May 9, 2020.
“Postcards from the Pandemic,” Virginia Quarterly Review, April 22, 2020.
“The Long Tradition of Writers Needing Ritual,” LitHub, March 27, 2020.
“How Perumal Murugan Was Resurrected Through Writing,” New Yorker.com, December 12, 2019.
“How Fiction Can Defeat Fake News,” Columbia Journalism Review, Fall, 2019.
“Bookshelves: John Berger in My Family Album,” Granta.com., August, 2019.
“The Ruse of Fiction,” Interview with Amitava Kumar, Public Books, August, 2019.
“I’m Writing a Novel, But There is the News,” BRICK 103, Summer 2019.
“Drawing in a Time of Fear & Lies,” Hyperallergic, May 25, 2019.
“Intimacy is overrated; newness is everything,” National Geographic Traveller India, March 2019.
“Grammar as Resistance in the Trump Era,” Medium, February 11, 2019.
“Prized Possession,” Sharp Magazine, August, 2018. (My mother’s prayer beads.)
“Notebooks,” Granta.com, August, 2018. (On the writing of Immigrant, Montana.)
“Consider the Monkey,” Powells.com, August, 2018. (On Ota Benga.)
“Material Witness: The Novelist and the Liar,” The Baffler, No. 40, July, 2018. (On art and artifice.)
“Love Poems for the Border Patrol,” New Yorker.com, February, 2018. (On immigrant writing.)
“Confessions of a Beef Eater,” The Nation, October 30, 2017. (On cow vigilantism.)
“The Secret Histories,” Bookforum, June/July/August 2017. (On Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.)
“Being Indian in Trump’s America,” New Yorker.com, March 2017. (On bigotry.)
“Central India’s Ugly Fight for Environmental Justice,” New Yorker.com, February 2017. (Report from Bastar.)
“The Agony and Ecstasy of India at the Olympics,” New Yorker.com, August 2016. (On inequality in sports.)
“Pyre,” Granta 130, selected by Jonathan Franzen for Best American Essays 2016.
“Your Voice in My Ear,” The Hindustan Times, Jan 3, 2016. (On Indian fiction in English about small towns.)
“To Whom It May Concern,” Catapult, September 10, 2015. (On Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members and Padgett Powell.)
“On Philip Roth,” Library of America blog, August 10, 2015. (Philip Roth and on getting it wrong.)
“The Bookist,” The Hindustan Times, May 3, 2015. (New monthly column on books and writing.)
“Patna Roughcuts,” Granta, March 31, 2015. (A report on the old and the new Patna.)
“Ayad Akhtar, master Muslim ironist,” The Guardian, December 10, 2014. (Review of Pulitzer-winner Ayad Akhtar’s play The Invisible Hand.)
“The Rats of Patna,” In These Times, September 24, 2014. (Excerpt from A Matter of Rats.)
“The Banker, The Visitor, His Wife and Her Lover,” The New York Times Book Review, April 11, 2014. (Review of Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know.)
“The Rat’s Guide,” Excerpt from Amitava Kumar, A Matter of Rats (Duke University Press, 2014), Harper’s Magazine, January, 2014, pp. 17-21.
“In Praise of Ian Jack’s Small Town India,” BBC News India, August 21, 2013. (Review of Ian Jack’s Mofussil Junction.)
“Pangs of a Patna Visit,” Open Magazine, August 17, 2013. (On home and intimations of mortality.)
“What Links Japan and Jadugoda,” The Times of India, July 14, 2013. (On uranium poisoning.)
“The Buddha is Smiling in Bodh Gaya,” New York Times India Ink Blog, July 12, 2013. (On bomb blasts.)
Dead Bastards,” Open Magazine, June 13, 2013. (On poetry and the trial of Bradley Manning.)
“Redeemed,” Interview with Cheryl Strayed, Guernica Magazine June 2013.
“Who’s Got the Address?” Collaboration with Teju Cole, Text and Images, Guernica Magazine, March 2013. Republished in Domus (India) 18, Volume 02, Issue 07, May 2013, pp. 88-103.
“On Being Brown in America,” New York Times India Ink Blog, April 25, 2013. (On the media coverage of Boston Marathon bombings.)
“Ondaatje’s Table,” Interview with Michael Ondaatje, Guernica Magazine, March 2012.
“Hari Kunzru on Gods Without Men,” Interview in Paris Review Daily, March 6, 2012.
“The Map of My Village,” PEN America, Issue 15, Maps, 2011, 12-13. Republished in BRICK Magazine 89 (Canada).
“The Un-Victim,” Interview with Arundhati Roy, Guernica Magazine, February 2011. Reprinted as “The Power of Words,” with a new introduction, in Caravan, 1 March, 2011.
“Birth of a Salesman,” Guernica Magazine, August 2010. Reprint of Chapter 1 from A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm A Tiny Bomb.
“A Collaborator in Kashmir,” PEN America, Issue 10: Fear Itself, 2009, 91-96. Republished in original and Hindi translation in Manual for Treason, Edited by Murtaza Vali, Published by Sharjah Art Foundation, 2011, 96-109. Also published on Byliner.
“Bad News,” Review of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger and other books, Boston Review, November 1, 2008.
“Traveling Light,” Excerpt from Bombay-London-New York, and an accompanying interview on “Declarations of Independence,” minnesota review, 71-72 (Winter 2008/Spring 2009), Special Issue on Critical Credos, pp. 204-11.
“A Civilizing Mission,” on Eqbal Ahmad, The Nation, Nov 9, 2006.
“Lunch with a Bigot,” Seminar (India), Special issue on Indian Diaspora, Number 538, June 2004, 36-41.
“Howdy, Patna,” Transition, Volume 12, Number 3, (Issue 93), 54-67.
“Paper,” Essay in Kenyon Review, Volume XXIV, Numbers 3/4 (Summer/Fall 2002), 12-16.
“Splitting the Difference,” Transition, Volume 11, Number 1, (Issue 89), 44-55.