A Review by Ahmad Saidullah Sudipta Kaviraj. The Imaginary Institution of India: Politics and Ideas. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. 299 pp. $29.50. I. Approaching India Written in the 1980s and 90s, Sudipta Kaviraj’s eight essays on the intellectual history of politics and culture in India, with their heavy overlay of theory, are not…
Review of Partha Chatterjee's Empire and Nation: Selected Essays. Edited by Nivedita Menon. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. 368 pp. By Ahmad Saidullah I. Reclaiming The Nationalist Imagination History may, as Sembene Ousmane alleged, create its own images but the quest is to find who owns these representations. In the opening essay of Empire…
by Ahmad Saidullah The Letters of Sylvia Beach. Edited by Keri Walsh. Foreword by Noel Riley Fitch. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. 347 pp. $29.95. Sylvia Beach was an independent bookseller, a publisher, a literary agent and promoter. Noel Riley Fitch dubbed her “the midwife of literary modernism.” She opened Shakespeare and Company, “a…
by Ahmad Saidullah Javier Marías. Your Face Tomorrow. Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa. London: Serpent’s Tail. Vol. I: Fever and Spear. 2005. 387 pp. Vol. II: Dance and Dream. 2006. 341 pp. Vol. III: Poison, Shadow and Farewell. 2009. 546 pp. Javier Marías’ Your Face Tomorrow, a novel in three parts rather…