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.
Posts Tagged: Amitava Kumar
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 »
How to Be Rich in Love
The book-buyer for the Center for Fiction posted a review calling My Beloved Life “a rare find” but what I liked most of all was the part where after quoting Jadu, one of my protagonists, who says about himself, “I am, by profession, poor,” the reviewer adds, “But Jadu is rich in love.” During this… Read more »
Writing a Novel with Pictures
A painting titled “This is Father” by the famous Indian artist Atul Dodiya. This image had been in my mind when I was writing what became My Beloved Life. I go over this connection, and others, in a piece I wrote for Hazlitt magazine. As I say in the piece somewhere, to incorporate photographs and… Read more »
Fathers and Sons and Daughters
Pub. date for My Beloved Life. LitHub has put up an essay of mine on the writers I read over the past few years reporting on the death of their fathers. I found consolation in their words and I hope that you do too.