| Search | About | Preferences | Interact | Help | |
| 150 million books. 1 search engine. | ||

› Find signed collectible books: 'D. H. Lawrence and 'Difference': Postcoloniality and the Poetry of the Present'
More editions of D. H. Lawrence and 'Difference': Postcoloniality and the Poetry of the Present:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Freedom Song : Three Novels'
Amit Chaudhuri's first book to be published in the United States comprises three short novels and is a masterpiece of the telling detail--in one paragraph he accomplishes what might take other writers entire volumes. Consider, for example, this description of family life in "A Strange and Sublime Address":
Monday morning came like a fever. Chhotomama would be at the dining-table, eating a rapid meal of dal, fish, and rice, trying to avoid chewing as much of it as possible before he rushed to work. Then he would rush upstairs where a pair of polished black shoes would be waiting for him like a long-promised gift. He would spend five minutes persuading his feet to enter the shoes, or the shoes to swallow his feet.... Over and over again he would shout "I'm late!" in the classic manner of the man crying "Fire!" or "Timber!" or "Eureka!" while Saraswati and Mamima scuttled around him like frightened birds.The plot of "A Strange and Sublime Address" is slight--a young boy spends his summer with relatives in Calcutta--and consists mainly of a series of episodes strung together. But the characters are so lovingly limned and the places so intimately described that not even a one-way ticket to India could rival Chaudhuri's rendering.
He works similar magic on Oxford and Bombay in the second novel, "Afternoon Raag." Again, the story is almost inconsequential: a young Indian student at Oxford must choose between two women. What's really important here, however, are the character's memories of his music teacher back in Bombay; his mother's morning rituals; his father clipping his fingernails onto an old copy of The Times of India. Likewise, in the third novel, "Freedom Song," plot takes a back seat to the delicate workings of familial relationships as two clans attempt to marry off a "problem" relative. What makes these three short novels so satisfying is the fact that the author's remarkable sensibility is more than matched by his literary skillfulness. For readers in love with language, Freedom Song is the answer to a prayer. --Alix Wilber [via]
More editions of Freedom Song:

› Find signed collectible books: 'A New World : A Novel'
A relatively inconsequential plot provides the armature for Amit Chaudhuri's A New World: Jayojit Chatterjee, a recently divorced economics professor at an American college, returns home to Calcutta for a two-month holiday with his 7-year-old son, Bonny. Here he takes up residence in his parents' flat in a modern, characterless building. At once a son and a father, at home and displaced, he deals with the minutiae of each day and thinks about his failed marriage, his parents' health, his mother's cooking, his own weight gain, the neighbors, the weather, and the hired help.
Notable for the precision of his observations, Chaudhuri recounts small telling moments of daily life with a mannerliness that avoids looking squarely at the obvious dysfunction in the Chatterjee household, while at the same time obliquely illuminating the melancholy that pervades it. Once part of colonial India's military, Jayojit's now retired parents live lives of reduced circumstances--the rhythm of their days dictated by heat, a morning walk, a trip to the bank, the daily suspense over whether the maid will appear. Proud, affectionate, but inarticulate, they express their love through offers of food and financial news. Uncomplaining, Jayojit and Bonny endure the climate and ennui, and in a marginal, temporary way participate in a world that is no longer theirs. Chaudhuri's writing, like his characters, is admirable in its restraint, as in this passage in which he describes Jayojit's first morning in Calcutta:
Jayojit had woken up late, at eleven. He had had a bath, and then changed into a shirt and shorts. Wearing shorts exposed his large fair thighs and calves, covered with smooth strands of black hair. His mother seemed to notice nothing unusual about his clothes; parents accept that offspring who live abroad will appear to them in a slightly altered incarnation, and are even disappointed if they do not.Thus formality and forbearance binds this family as much as love.
Hailed as a dazzling new talent in 1999 for Freedom Song, a collection of three novellas, Chaudhuri's remarkable accomplishment lies in the scope and complexity he paradoxically evokes in his exacting attention paid to mundane detail. --Victoria Jenkins [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature'
More editions of The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Real Time'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Real Time : Stories and a Memoir in Verse'
More editions of Real Time : Stories and a Memoir in Verse:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Real Time : Stories and a Reminiscence'
More editions of Real Time : Stories and a Reminiscence:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Women in Love'
More editions of Women in Love:
Founded in 1997, BookFinder.com has become a leading book price comparison site:
Find and compare hundreds of millions of new books, used books, rare books and out of print books from over 100,000 booksellers and 60+ websites worldwide.
