“A Matter of Rats” calls itself “a short biography of Patna,” the capital city of Bihar, but like Kumar’s other books, it is many (perhaps too many) things at once. A memoiristic essay that strives to reconcile his feelings for his hometown — despair on the one hand and concern on the other, for… Read more »
Posts Tagged: Amitava Kumar
The Shiver of the Real
I have an article in the latest Caravan on Indian writing in English: The elections had arrived. Each political party presented its manifesto. “Health vans will reach every part of India.” “Necessary legal framework will be created to protect and promote cow and its progeny.” “Every cycle-rickshaw puller will be given an auto-rickshaw or a… Read more »
The Daily Worker’s Chappals
Culture Strike has published a brief adaptation of a section from A Matter of Rats: A couple of days before Independence Day this year, en route to Patna, I met Aman Sethi for dinner at a Delhi restaurant. Sethi is the author of A Free Man, a wonderful account of Ashraf, a daily-wage laborer from… Read more »
In the Light of What We Know
My review of Zia Haider Rahman’s “strange and brilliant” novel in the New York Times Book Review. An excerpt: Zafar’s narration shifts registers — “this fluctuation from crystal clarity of exposition to a barely restrained fury” — and folds into lengthy but fascinating digressions. Like the narrator of W. G. Sebald’s “The Rings of Saturn,”… Read more »
Chronogram Profile
A piece on A Matter of Rats in the Hudson Valley magazine, Chronogram: A Matter of Rats was inspired by E. B. White’s 1949 essay Here Is New York, for which White traveled to Manhattan during a heat wave, staying at the Algonquin Hotel and going on daily foraging trips. Kumar followed his lead, visiting… Read more »
Away From Her
My mother passed away in Patna earlier this month. This eulogy, written on the night of her death, was published in the Indian Express: I am writing these words during a 14-hour flight from New York to Delhi. After landing in Delhi, I will catch another flight, this one to Patna. I am going to… Read more »
Mofussil Junction
A piece that I wrote on trains while traveling in a train. It appeared in Northeast Review: My son turned four the other day. Every night I read to him and sometimes we read together a picture book about trains. This is a book my son likes very much. The pictures show trains in bright… Read more »