Everything in American public life, when it comes to race relations, serves as a frame for a history of violence and degrading… — Amitava Kumar American Copy Share Image
'An Obedient Father' is perhaps the novel that, some might say, Arundhati Roy had wanted to write when she wrote 'The God… — Amitava Kumar Books Copy Share Image
Authenticity does matter, but only as it serves the novel's more traditional literary demands: that the fault lines be drawn where the… — Amitava Kumar Authenticity Copy Share Image
In 'Bombay-London-New York,' I speak of the ways in which the 'soft' emotion of nostalgia is turned into the 'hard' emotion of… — Amitava Kumar Fundamentalism Copy Share Image
A postcolonial writer who has often been credited with mixing the mundane with the magical, and history with fiction, is Salman Rushdie. — Amitava Kumar Fiction Copy Share Image
Each employed immigrant has his or her place of work. It is only the taxi driver, forever moving on wheels, who occupies… — Amitava Kumar Immigrant Copy Share Image
Inequality reigns in horrifying ways, and not everyone can even read, but the world of media and advertising withholds very little from… — Amitava Kumar Horrifying Copy Share Image
We live in a cynical system where the powerful are able to exploit the demand of the aggressive few, from whichever religion… — Amitava Kumar Cynical Copy Share Image
We learn that our lives find narrative form neither in the tired, familiar slogans of our captains nor in the symmetries of… — Amitava Kumar Differences Copy Share Image
I've immersed myself in reading more and more of American literature, but no editor has asked me to comment on Jonathan Franzen… — Amitava Kumar American Copy Share Image
With non-fiction, there is the struggle to be accurate. With fiction, it is a bit different: the desire to let imagination take… — Amitava Kumar Desire Copy Share Image
Ideally, I'd like to write poetry for public performances and prose for a different, more contemplative kind of consumption. — Amitava Kumar Consumption Copy Share Image
When I close my eyes and think of a writer, I don't imagine him or her as someone who is sitting above… — Amitava Kumar Blindfolded Copy Share Image
My own personal conviction is that if I were writing without thinking about how images or how journalism is creating a world… — Amitava Kumar Faith Copy Share Image
I grew up in India during the 1960s and '70s in a meat-eating Hindu family. Only my mother and my grandparents were… — Amitava Kumar Family Copy Share Image
The radio stations will happily recycle a badly worded statement by a politician all day but will steer clear of broadcasting more… — Amitava Kumar Day Copy Share Image
I like to write about real people, real crimes. But what has increasingly come to interest me, and also appear to me… — Amitava Kumar Come Copy Share Image
I thought I'd be the first to introduce herbal tea to Patna. White tea, ginger tea, rooibos, camomile. No one touched it.… — Amitava Kumar Be the first Copy Share Image
My past makes me an insider, but my profession makes me an outsider. A writer always stands outside to report on reality. — Amitava Kumar Always Copy Share Image
Mistaken identity, of course, has been the province of much postcolonial fiction. An important feature of this writing is the manner in… — Amitava Kumar Failure Copy Share Image
Governance in India comes in the iron-clad armour of bureaucracy. Anyone in uniform considers it his or her right that we regard… — Amitava Kumar Bureaucracy Copy Share Image
A long, negative review I wrote of Rushdie's novel 'Fury' earned me a rebuke from the writer: He told an administrator at… — Amitava Kumar College Copy Share Image
For some members of the radical Left, particularly in the West, people in developing countries are an ideological abstraction, on whom fantasies… — Amitava Kumar Developing countries Copy Share Image
One of my earliest lessons in guilt was imparted in childhood through the story of the death of Mahatma Gandhi's father. — Amitava Kumar Childhood Copy Share Image
If the 20th century was marked by travel - planes in flight - then the events of 9/11 ushered in the age… — Amitava Kumar 20th century Copy Share Image
In fiction, you don't invent the events. What is imaginative about it is the consciousness: how you think about the events and… — Amitava Kumar Consciousness Copy Share Image
I think criticism is often so pallid, so tame. I wish it were more performative. — Amitava Kumar Criticism Copy Share Image
No civilization has a monopoly on tolerance; each is capable of bigotry. — Amitava Kumar Bigotry Copy Share Image
I enjoy the inventive ways in which language is manipulated to make meaning. — Amitava Kumar Enjoy Copy Share Image
If India breaks your heart with untold inequalities, it also surprises you with the unheralded achievements of its most humble citizens. — Amitava Kumar Heart Copy Share Image
Bad writing as a conscious goal is liberating for students: They are freed to be creative in a new and different way. — Amitava Kumar Bad Copy Share Image
I have long held that many of the writers and artists working in the aftermath of 9/11 have presented a faux familiarity… — Amitava Kumar Art Copy Share Image
I'm generalizing wildly, but academic books find safety in explanations that reduce the chaos of social life. — Amitava Kumar Books Copy Share Image
Our public culture is one in which only the young and the beautiful will succeed. If you're forty, you're finished. — Amitava Kumar Beautiful Copy Share Image
To my mind, a journalist needs to espouse objectivity and distance, while a writer practises an art that is more free. — Amitava Kumar Art Copy Share Image
For years, in the wake of Rushdie, I had imagined magical realism to be the last refuge of the non-resident Indian. — Amitava Kumar Indian Copy Share Image
