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The first nonfiction collection by internationally acclaimed writer
and translator Amit Majmudar, Black Avatar combines elements of
memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism. The eight
pieces in this deeply engaging volume reflect author Amit
Majmudar’s comprehensive studies of American, European, and
Indian traditions, as well as his experiences in both suburban Ohio
and the western Indian state of Gujarat. The volume begins with the
title piece, a fifteen-part examination of “How Colorism Came to
India.” Tracing the evolution of India’s bias in favor of light
skin, Majmudar reflects on the effects of colonialism, drawing upon
sources ranging from early Sanskrit texts to contemporary film and
television. Other essays illuminate subjects both timely and
timeless. “The Ramayana and the Birth of Poetry” discusses how
suffering is portrayed in art and literature (“The spectrum of
suffering: slapstick on one end, scripture on the other, with
fiction and poetry . . . in the vastness between them”), while in
“Five Famous Asian War Photographs”—a 2018 Best American
Essays selection—Majmudar analyzes why these iconic images of
atrocity have such emotional resonance. In “Nature/Worship,”
another multi-part piece, the author turns his attention to climate
change, linking notions of environmentalism to his ancestral
tradition of finding divinity within the natural world, connections
that form the basis of religious belief. Perhaps the greatest
achievement of these wide-ranging essays is the prose
itself—learned yet lively, erudite yet accessible—nimbly
revealing the workings of a wonderfully original mind.
Mala and Ronak are adults now. They've married, begun their own
families and moved away from the suffocating world of their first
generation immigrant parents. But when they learn their mother has
only months to live, the focus of their world returns to her home.
Having shown little interest in the Indian cuisine they eat at
every gathering, Mala decides to master the recipes her mother
learned at her own mother's knee. And as they cook together, mother
and daughter begin to confront the great divisions of their lives,
and finally heal their fractured relationship. But when Ronak comes
up with a plan to memorialise his mother, the hard-won peace
between them is tested to its limits. Written with tenderness and
wry compassion, Amit Majmudar has captured anew the immigrant
experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation,
and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations.
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Abundance (Paperback)
Amit Majmudar
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R473
R390
Discovery Miles 3 900
Save R83 (18%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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When Mala and Ronak learn that their mother has only a few
months to live, they are reluctantly pulled back into the
Midwestern world of their Indian immigrant parents. In the brief
time between diagnosis and deterioration, busy, efficient Mala
commits to mastering her mother's slow art of Indian cooking.
Perfecting the raita and the rotli, the two begin not only to work
together but also to talk, confronting their deepest divisions and
failures. But when Ronak hits upon the idea of selling their
cooking-as-healing experience as a high-concept memoir, immigrant
and native-born must find a way to cross this last divide.
With grace, acuity, and wry compassion, in "Abundance," Amit
Majmudar has written anew the immigrant experience, the clash of
cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignant, the
tangled ties between generations.
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Partitions (Paperback)
Amit Majmudar
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R530
R437
Discovery Miles 4 370
Save R93 (18%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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"Unforgettable." --Boston Globe As India is rent into two nations
with the creation of Pakistan, communal violence breaks out on both
sides of the new border and streaming hordes of refugees flee from
blood and chaos. At an overrun train station, Shankar and Kenshav,
twin Hindu boys, lose sight of their mother and go in search of
her. A young Sikh girl, Simran Kaur, has run away from her father
who would rather poison her than see her defiled. And Ibrahim
Masud, an elderly Muslim doctor, limps toward the new Muslim state
of Pakistan, rediscovering on the way his role as a healer. A
dramatic, luminous story of families and nations broken and formed,
"Partitions," "written with piercing beauty, alive with moral
passion and sorrowful insight, is] a rueful masterpiece" ("Kirkus
Reviews," starred review).
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