My Beloved Life: A Novel

Amitava Kumar . Aleph Book Company . English

An absorbing, deeply moving novel that traces the arc of a man's life, an ordinary life made exceptional by the fact that he has loved and has been loved in turn. Jadunath Kunwar's beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. In 1935, in a village near George Orwell's birthplace, Jadu's mother, while pregnant with him, nearly dies from a cobra bite. When we see Jadu again, he is in college, meeting the Sherpa who first summited Everest and wondering what it means to be modern. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, and as changes big and small sweep across India, Jadu finds meaning in the most unexpected places. He befriends poets and politicians. He becomes a historian. And he has a daughter, Jugnu, a television journalist with a career in the United States�whose own story recasts the past in a new light. Piercing, fleet-footed, and undeniably resonant, this is a novel from a singularly gifted writer about how we tell stories and write history, how individuals play a counterpoint to big movements, how no single life is without consequence.

Categories: Unknown

About the Author

<b>Amitava Kumar</b> is the author of <i>A Time Outside This Time; Writing Badly Is Easy; The Lovers; A Matter of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna; Home Products</i>, which was shortlisted for the Crossword Prize; and <i>A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb</i>, which received the Page Turner Award. Kumar�s writing has appeared in <i>Caravan, Harper�s, The Guardian, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair</i>, and <i>the New York Times</i>. His essay �Pyre�, first published in <i>Granta</i>, was selected by Jonathan Franzen for Best American Essays 2016. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016. Kumar is Professor of English at Vassar College.

Download BookR now and choose mindful reading!

Download Now!