HarperCollins India announces the release on Dec 5, 2024 of The Green Book, the final volume in my trilogy of drawing books-plus-diaries. My eternal thanks to Udayan Mitra of HarperCollins India and to Hemali Sodhi of A Suitable Agency. An excerpt: Many of the drawings and paintings in this book are the result of the… Read more »
Posts Tagged: Amitava Kumar
What If Trump Wins
The terrible prospect of a second Trump presidency raises in my mind several questions, and one of them concerns our survival as artists and writers. How will we respond? I have been thinking of my 2021 novel A Time Outside This Time that was written during the years of the Trump rule. It was… Read more »
UK Paperback out on March 6
Thank you to Picador for this fabulous cover for the paperback edition of My Beloved Life out on March 6, 2025.
India’s 78th Independence Day
Here are a few portraits from my current project on Indians discussing their idea of India: Actor Manoj Bajpayee Journalist and writer Supriya Nair Pankaj Kumar, migrant worker Sidhique Kappan, jailed journalist More here.
Lethal Heat
I have a piece in The Guardian on the election results asking if we can have democracy if temperatures continue to rise. The crucial point to be noted here is that the heat did not figure at all among the thundering sentiments delivered from the dais by the candidates. The prominent environmentalist Ashish Kothari told… Read more »
Without Death, There is No Art
In which I reveal all my secrets. How did I come to write My Beloved Life. For @Scroll. The last exchange I had with my father was on the morning of March 7 last year. That same morning, I had learned from a phone call that I had been awarded a fellowship at the… Read more »
India Votes
My little paean to current Indian politics is presented during this interview with Al Jazeera. A few days ago an Indian newspaper asked if I could recommend a literary text that shed light on Indian elections. I wrote back that in my new novel My Beloved Life, I have put a scene that… Read more »
The Sense of an Ending
I have just made a SubStack post about my time at the Cullman Center coming to a close. I have included in the post, at the request of a website that promotes reading, a list of five books on fathers. And some writing advice. Please check it out and subscribe to my SubStack!
Becoming Indian
I was born and grew up in India, and I’m trying to remember when I became Indian. That is the opening line of my essay in the latest issue of Foreign Policy, a special issue devoted to India. Here is the rest of my essay.
An Ordinary Life
Sometimes the book you write finds the right reader. Here is the great James Wood in the New Yorker magazine lavishing generous, insightful attention on my new novel, My Beloved Life. Excerpting a few lines from the essay: Above all, his new novel is always deeply human; the heart is everywhere in these pages. It… Read more »