Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate

by Amitava Kumar (Editor)

For more than a generation, Indian writers in English have won praise in the West. The roll call of Indian-born writers is Rushdie, Mukerjee, Mehta, Ghosh, Naipaul, Kureishi, Narayan, Mistry, among many others.
Amitava Kumar, himself an Indian writer now 'away' in America, is editing a broad anthology of work by Indian writers whose lives and literary identities have been formed by their experiences in some form of exile. Spanning writing from the 1920s to the present, Away contains work by the writers mentioned above, alongside earlier pieces by Gandhi, Nehru, and Tagore, and a wide range of writers over the last half-century.

Genres: Academic, Fiction

432 pages, Hardcover

First published October 20, 2003

About the author

Amitava Kumar is a novelist, poet, journalist, and Professor of English at Vassar College. He was born in Bihar, India; he grew up in the town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty, and delicious mangoes.

He is the author of Nobody Does the Right Thing; A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb; Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate, a New York Times “Editors’ Choice” selection; Bombay—London—New York, a New Statesman (UK) “Book of the Year” selection; and Passport Photos. He is the editor of several books, including Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate, The Humour and the Pity: Essays on V. S. Naipaul, and World Bank Literature. He is also an editor of the online journal Politics and Culture and the screenwriter and narrator of the prize-winning documentary film Pure Chutney.

Kumar’s writing has appeared in The Nation, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, The American Prospect, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hindu, and other publications in North America and India.