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The Hindu
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Amitava Kumar on Books That Shaped Him—And Why Reading Should Hurt a Little
Published : Jul 06, 2025 10:16 IST - 8 MINS READ Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of nonfiction including Husband of a Fanatic, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, A Matter of Rats, and four novels, including Immigrant, Montana, whichwas on the best of the year lists at The New Yorker, The New York Times, and former US President Barack Obama's list of favourite books of 2018, and A Time Outside This Time. Kumar's latest, My Beloved Life (2024), was praised by James Wood as 'beautiful, truthful fiction'. Three volumes of his diaries and drawings were published by HarperCollins India. His work, often exploring migration, identity, and global issues, has appeared in Granta, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper's, Guernica, and The Nation. Kumar was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016, a Cullman Center Fellowship at the New York Public Library (2023-24), and residencies from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Lannan Foundation, and the Hawthornden Foundation. He is professor of English at Vassar College, where he holds the Helen D. Lockwood Chair. Kumar has written with grace and style about the complexities of identity and migration in his novels, essays, and reportage. With keen observation and deep curiosity, his work across genres reflects a lifelong love of books that have shaped both his craft and life. In this new column for Frontline on books that have shaped different writers, public intellectuals, activists, etc., he spoke about the authors and books that left a lasting impression on him—from his school days in Patna to his college years in Delhi, and later when he moved to the US for further studies. He also shares his favourite books, the ones he gifts to family and friends, and books he often revisits for inspiration. How will you define your relationship with books and reading? How have your reading tastes evolved over the years as you got older? I wish I had more time to read. When my students at the college where I teach ask me if they should pursue higher education, I'm in two minds: on the one hand, there are fewer jobs for English PhDs, but, on the other hand, you read so much when you are a student. I only became a real reader when I was doing my PhD. I had asked my dissertation director how much should I read, and he had replied, 'You should read till your eyes bleed.' Tell us about your earliest reading memory from childhood that made an impression? Was it a book in English, or Hindi? I must have been 12 or 13. I had gone early to a cinema hall in Patna to buy tickets for my sisters and others. I got the tickets and then opened the book The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham. I had recently borrowed it from the British Library in Patna, which is now gone. I was surprised that I understood what I was reading and that it gave me pleasure. This was a late start but it was a real introduction to the pleasures of reading. Any particular book or story from your childhood years that holds a special place in your heart? You know, textbooks are often unimaginative, boring things. And they are anathema to any notion of delight that reading affords. And we have mastered this fatal art in India. Many bookshops, including in my hometown Patna, offer mostly textbooks for sale. It is a disease caused by commerce. But my own experience with textbooks was different in one crucial respect. When I came to Delhi from Bihar for my higher secondary, my English textbook had the writings of Maugham whom I have mentioned before, but also Khushwant Singh, George Orwell, Dom Moraes, S. Radhakrishnan, Nissim Ezekiel, Edward Thomas. Those textbooks have a special place in my heart. Also Read | Class differences are very important wherever or whenever you look: Abdulrazak Gurnah Any book or author(s) that profoundly influenced you as a young man while studying in a college in New Delhi? I was staying in the Hindu College hostel when pursuing my MA. I didn't have a room of my own and a friend very kindly let me sleep on his floor. On his desk he had among his books to help him with his civil services exams, a copy of V.S. Naipaul's Finding the Centre. My friend wasn't literary; I have no idea how he came to acquire that book. There are two narratives in it and the first one is about Naipaul's literary beginnings and his discovery of the vocation of writing. It was an education to read that account and I have always cherished it. Book or books that made you want to become a writer? Well, the book I just mentioned to you is certainly a part of that self-fashioning. So much of Naipaul's work is problematic in its judgments but because he is always dramatising the process of writing, he becomes very attractive to anyone who wants to pursue writing. Any particular books or authors you find yourself returning to often, and why? I have always been fascinated with the ways in which J.M. Coetzee examines the workings of power and shame in his books. I'm thinking of Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace. I like the intellectual probing that he does in his other books too. In recent years, I have been drawn to Annie Ernaux's books. I like her for her intelligence and clarity. Also, her books are short! A book that is your comfort read, on your bedside, that you often revisit for inspiration or pleasure? I think reading is good when it disturbs you—which is the opposite of comfort. I'm lucky to have several friends who are writers. When I pick up their books, I feel I'm once again in conversation with them. It is no different from when I'm sitting with them, sharing a meal or having drinks. For that purpose, over the past few months, I have re-read Teju Cole's Tremor and Open City, and Zadie Smith's Feel Free and Embassy of Cambodia. Any book or books that you often give away as a gift to family members or close friends? I don't give the same book to people—even though I was intrigued by a woman who once told me that she gave men she was intimate with Roland Barthes's A Lover's Discourse. In recent months, I have gifted my son books by Colson Whitehead and Ta-Nehisi Coates and my daughter, who is an English major, books by Sheila Heti, Sigrid Nunez, Claire Messud and Rachel Kushner. Are there some books or authors you discovered later in life that made a deep impression on you? As it happens, one of my editors at Granta, Thomas Meaney, has written about a fascist writer named Curzio Malaparte. I read the piece and was fired up by Meaney's vivid prose but I was also faced by the question—why had I never known about this writer? I really feel that so much of what I have read has come late in my life. And there is so much that I have not read. During COVID, thanks to Yiyun Li, I read War and Peace. And Moby Dick. In both these writers I loved the way in which fiction gave way to essays. What are you currently reading? Any recent book written by an Indian author—in fiction, non-fiction, or poetry—that you would highly recommend? Later this month, I have to teach a writing workshop at the New York Public Library for schoolteachers. For that, I'm reading Reality Hunger by David Shields and the novella So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell. I really enjoyed Sakina's Kiss by Vivek Shanbhag. Two books by younger Indian writers I liked were Neha Dixit's The Many Lives of Syeda X and Saharu Kannanari's Chronicle of an Hour and a Half. Your go-to Indian classic? One that you would recommend everyone should read? I have always liked Pankaj Mishra's Butter Chicken in Ludhiana. I saw him in London recently and he was kind enough to give a copy of that book to my son. In the hotel room that night, I re-read the opening pages. So funny, so sharp. Also Read | I was writing unwritten history: Easterine Kire Can you name a few lesser-known books by Indian authors in any genre you wish more people would discover and read? Had it not been for the wretched IPL [Indian Premier League], so many talented cricketers would not get their moment in the spotlight. I think the same applies to writing. A few are chosen and the rest toil in the shadows. If you look at the numbers, so much mindless verbiage dominates the market. Literary fiction in India still awaits discovery, especially in languages other than English. Name a few books that have changed or influenced your understanding of contemporary India and your place in it? Over the past few years, I have liked reading Snigdha Poonam's Dreamers, Mansi Choksi's The Newlyweds, and Arundhati Roy's My Seditious Heart. Any book(s) that best captures the spirit of your home city? The books by Siddharth Chowdhury, starting with Patna Roughcut, have moments that are deeply authentic and they pierce my heart. You are hosting a literary dinner party and you can invite only three Indian writers, authors, poets, both living or dead. Who would you like to invite, and why? Next week, I'm having dinner with two writer friends, Kiran Desai and Sabrina Dhawan. We are going to have fun. Who else could I invite to make it even more enjoyable? I have met Vikram Seth but not for any length of time. I think he would be smart and hilarious. Could you find out if he is free on Sunday at 7:30 pm? Majid Maqbool is an independent journalist and writer based in Kashmir. Bookmarks is a fortnightly column where writers reflect on the books that shaped their ideas, work, and ways of seeing the world.
Scroll.in
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘To be an artist or a writer, you have to be in the business of serious noticing': Amitava Kumar
Amitava Kumar writes (and paints and draws) every day. It is an 'important' part of his identity, says the writer. The author of several works of nonfiction and four novels, Kumar creates work that is a testament to the value of consistency and the symbiotic relationship between all forms of the creative arts. His latest novel, My Beloved Life, is a moving portrait of the hardships that the common Indian overcame – and succumbed to – during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kumar also pondered the devastating effects of the pandemic in The Yellow Book. The second in a series of three books, in which Kumar responds to the world around him through drawings, writings, and memories. In The Blue Book, Kumar tries to see beauty in a world where fake news reigns supreme and everything appears to be on the verge of collapse. In the final book in the series, The Green Book, Kumar gives us an insight into the mind of a writer who observes closely and attempts to capture in images and words what is happening to the world around us. In a conversation with Scroll, the writer talked about how the series came to be, why he doesn't want to have 'the cosmopolitan ease of someone at ease everywhere', and how you can put your iPad to good use. Excerpts from the conversation: How did you sort your thoughts into three colours, that is, blue, yellow, and green? It started with the blue. And that was almost by chance. Just a string of associations and a painting I had made with a blue book in it. At that time, I had no thought of doing other books. And then the idea of the next book came. This time, particularly during the long period I was in London, I was looking for the colour yellow. By the time I was working on the green book, the coherent idea of the books in a series, had formed in my mind. Green now meant in my mind the search for nature and for rebirth but also for what was young and perhaps unripe like a first love. A traveller, observer, writer – are these the three words that best describe you? On a good day, what do you feel most like? And on gloomier days? Your middle term – observer – is the link that unites the other two. If you are to be an artist or a writer, you have to be in the business of serious noticing. On a good day, I feel the easy unity between all my pursuits. There is a sense of creating something more than what one was given. On gloomier days, I feel like I'm taking notes, in one form or another, on events unfolding beyond one's control in the world at large. There is in that instance less of creativity and more of a kind of desperate, maybe even silent, urgency. While all three are true for you, I wouldn't hesitate to think of you as an artist–painter too. Do you see yourself as one? Thank you. You are very kind. Now and then, I allow myself to imagine that I'm an artist–painter. Actually, I make sure I do at least one drawing or painting each day. On the other hand, I want to insist on the viability and the dignity of being an amateur. In a world where democracy is shrinking, billionaires and crony capitalism and politicians blessing the billionaire's beta-bahu, we have to at least keep the arts democratic. Everyone can write or paint every day. It is not necessary to be brilliant at it; instead, it can be a small, nourishing practice that enriches our lives. In The Green Book, you write about observing the Ganga and those who live along its banks. As someone who divides their time between New York and India, what baffles you, enrages you, and gladdens you each time you come back to the river? The Ganga has been receding from my hometown, Patna. So it is as if she is leaving us. What gladdens me is simply the sight of the river, and then to stand beside it and sense how the river has flown along those banks for millennia. What is enraging is the filth. In The Yellow Book, you confront the devastation of COVID-19. This is a theme you revisit in My Beloved Life. Life as we know it came to a standstill for each of us. Still, we see that you drew through it, wrote wherever you could. What is the value of art and creation in such exceptional circumstances? Did it ever feel futile, or powerless? I don't know. I mean, that's the honest answer. Your art, your writing, can't make the dead come back. I remember reading about the metal in the crematoriums melting from the unending fires. And our political leaders boasting about the size of their election rallies. When I received news of an uncle's death near Bhagalpur from COVID, I remember painting one of the pandemic postcards. 'Why are we (the educated liberals) so ineffective in our dissent?,' you write in The Blue Book. Have you found an answer to this yet? It's an old question. People find different answers that work for a while, and we see signs of effective dissent. Wasn't that true of the Arab Spring? Or, for that matter, the anti-CAA protests? I don't have an answer for myself that is permanent or necessarily potent. I can only respond in my writing. For instance, faced with the deluge of fake news, I wrote a novel called A Time Outside This Time. You also mourn the loss of your language, Hindi to be precise. And you consider yourself to be in 'exile' in the US. But when I read My Beloved Life, I couldn't recall a novel that was so Bihari in its mood. So Indian. How do you slip into this Indian–Bihari identity in your fiction while travelling so widely around the world? Does the travel in some way distill what it means to be Indian or a Bihari? That's very nice to hear. I love that. And can't thank you enough for the compliment. Don't know what to say in response to your question. I see people all the time who only two months, or maybe only two weeks, after leaving Delhi for New York, begin to sound different in their speech. I have never left my roots. Whenever I speak in Hindi, people will always ask me, Aap Bihar se hain? I don't want to have the cosmopolitan ease of someone at ease everywhere; I'd rather embrace something more difficult, of being at home nowhere. (I think I stole that from Edward Said.) In all three books you hark back to the writers whose works have inspired you. There's also a moving chapter on Shaunak Sen's film. We rarely read about how other forms of media apart from literature inspires a writer. Would you say that, in a way, these three books are also a way for you to reflect on your own growth as an artist and an audience? Sometimes we forget that it is equally important for an artist to be a refined consumer of the arts… An important part of my identity, something that I do daily, is read literature and look at art or watch films, and I cannot imagine doing writing where those parts of me aren't reflected. The other thing I want to tell you is that I was a provincial boy when growing up, quite ignorant not only of the world at large but the cultural riches that surrounded me. It has been a wonderful journey, this life, learning about what is created in complex and beautiful ways by the people I admire. And that is also the story I'm continually sharing with my audience of readers and others. Many of your sketches look like they were done on the move. Is that true? Do you carry your pens, pencils, and colours everywhere you go or do you like to come back, reflect on what you saw, and transpose it on paper? Yes, yes, I carry many of these materials with me. But, you know, it is easy when what you are carrying materials for watercolours. I've never painted oils in the open air like many wonderful artists that one reads about. In some cases, however, I've made a quick sketch on the move and then worked on another version back in my study. Also, photographs. I have taken a photo on my phone and then come back home and painted that scene. I forgot to mention the iPad! I have taken it with me on my travels and drawn on the iPad too. When did it feel like the right time to introduce your reader to your artworks? Would you consider lending your artworks to an exhibition? I didn't start doing these paintings in earnest until the start of the pandemic. People were dying – I'm talking of March and April of 2020 – and after the snow melted here flowers were blooming. I started painting those flowers on the obituaries I cut out from the New York Times. When I posted them on social media, Hemali Sodhi asked me if she could use them on the website for the new literary agency she was starting, A Suitable Agency. And then, a few weeks later, when I kept up posting more work, she wrote to me and said that she thought there was a book to be put together. One thing led to another, and now I draw or paint every day. Just as I write every day, even if it is only a few words.
