Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Beautifully evoking the sights and sounds, rituals and routines of town and countryside, Nirad Chaudhuri’s memoir begins with his childhood in turn-of-the-century Bengal. He then leads the reader through the labyrinth of Calcutta, charting the course of a political and moral education that leaves him a stranger in his own land.Synopsis
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is an astonishing work of self-discovery and the revelation of a peerless and provocative sensibility. Describing his childhood in the Bengali countryside and his youth in Calcutta—and telling the story of modern India from his own fiercely independent viewpoint—Chaudhuri fashions a book of deep conviction, charm, and intimacy that is also a masterpiece of the writer's art.
Publishers Weekly
Intensely rational, Chaudhuri, a Bengali and author of Thy Hand, Great Anarch! , describes his native country with the intent that ``one part of this world may still retain some curiosity about the combination of man and geography which has worn out the British Empire.'' The autobiography yields a dense, absorbing account of Hindu boyhood (he was born in 1897) in a small village in what is now Bangladesh. Careful observations illuminate a waning culture: ``A Hindu . . . accepts the first wail of birth as the leitmotiv of existence and manages . . . to lead a mock-turtle's life during the whole of it.'' Chaudhuri concludes with intricate analyses of the intellectual history of India before independence, seen in the context of its political and social history (from the Dravidians through the Raj); its religion--the ``reformed'' Hinduism of Swami Vivekananda; and Bengali literature. Chaudhuri's judgments, often surprising, are those of a world citizen; his scholarliness is humbling. (Sept. )