Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Amartya Sen is an economist, but this is not a book on economics. It’s a book of essays on history and culture. It’s definitely not the first book you should read on India, it’s for someone who knows the country well, but it’s a wonderfully erudite, discursive, witty, clever book. He writes on a range of topics, including the extraordinary atheist tradition in India, which is often forgotten about. It’s a wonderful vision of India, and of how India has this long argumentative tradition of fighting about everything. So it’s a great title, it’s very true.
Amartya Sen, author of your third recommendation The Argumentative Indian, is an economist. Is this another discussion of Indian financial future?
He is an economist, but this is not a book on economics. It’s a book of essays on history and culture. It’s definitely not the first book you should read on India, it’s for someone who knows the country well, but it’s a wonderfully erudite, discursive, witty, clever book.
He writes on a range of topics, including the extraordinary atheist tradition in India, which is often forgotten about, taking on the V S Naipal Hindu fundamentalist line, of India being this pure Hindu land. He’s very good on the degree to which India is shared between Muslims and Hindus. India is multi-faith, multi-cultural, multi-lingual. And it’s this pluralism and then endless debate going on between these different ways of looking at the world, different value systems: Islam, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, atheist. It’s a wonderful vision of India, and of how India has this long, argumentative tradition of fighting about everything. So it’s a great title, it’s very true.
Definitely a book for someone who knows India well. It’s a very necessary antidote to all sorts of myth-making by a variety of different people.
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Travel writer and historian William Dalrymple wrote his first book, In Xanadu, at the age of 22. Since then he has published seven further books and been awarded a host of awards for his writing and broadcasting. He is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and of the Royal Society of Literature.
