REVIEWS:

"....[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

"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

"Kumar is a skilled storyteller... His prose is always elegant, his ideas always pulsate with energy and his humanity shines through every page. 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

"What a relief to read criticism of South Asian fiction that is immune to 'the desperate grasping for authenticity that produces ... the mistress of spices, the heat and dust, the sweating men and women in lisping saris, brought together in arranged marriages, yes ... and the whole hullabaloo in the guava orchard.'" – The Village Voice

"Bombay-London-New York is not only still the best Indian book about how and why we read but also an original, riveting piece of non-fiction."– Pradeep Sebastian, in The Hindu 2005.

"This is a work of luminous imagination and tenderness. Amitava Kumar is a startling storyteller, that rare cultural critic who writes from and for the heart. When last did any academic so successfully harmonize a love of language with a passion for ideas? This book will surely establish Kumar as one of the most eloquent, searching public intellectuals of his generation." – Rob Nixon, Rachel Carson Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of Dreambirds

"As a literary critic, memoirist, and social historian, Amitava Kumar is a rare and bracing presence in the world of Indian writing in English. He is connoisseur of tests, always alert to the felicitous phrase and image, but his greater achievement lies in illuminating the individual and collective histories that a young literature emerges from." – Pankaj Mishra, author of The Romantics and An End to Suffering.

READINGS:

"New Voices in Writing, New Forms of Criticism," Reading from Bombay-London-New York and talk, British Council, New Delhi, August 10, 2002. Other readings at Hindu College, Delhi, August 23, 2002; The South Street Seaport Museum, New York City, October 21, 2002; A House of Our Own Bookstore, Philadelphia, October 22, 2002; Brown University Bookstore, Providence, October 23, 2002; Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., October 25, 2002; University of Miami, Miami, October 28, 2002; Gallows Hill Bookstore, Hartford, November 7, 2002; Dartmouth College, Hanover, November 9, 2002; Rice University, Houston, November 14, 2002; and Goldsmith's College, London, November 22, 2002.