From The Village Voice:
“Isn’t that a bit like a Catholic marrying a Protestant back where I’m from?” asks the Irish officer at the Canadian office as Amitava Kumar, a Hindu writer from India, and his soon-to-be wife, Mona, a Pakistani Muslim, submit their marriage application. It’s much worse, according to Kumar’s Husband of a Fanatic, the reciprocity of hate between South Asia’s Hindu and Muslim communities having reached new levels of hostility over the last decade or so. Inspired by Underground, Haruki Murakami’s book on Tokyo’s 1995 sarin gas attack, Kumar tries to get to the root of this animosity via the personal experiences of victims. He visits scenes of carnage and sites of remand and retribution, and attempts to discourse with casualties and aggressors in places as distant as India, South Africa, and Queens.
More here.
