Home in the World: A Memoir

by Amartya Sen

Overview

From Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, a long-awaited memoir about home, belonging, inequality, and identity, recounting a singular life devoted to betterment of humanity.

The Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is one of a handful of people who may truly be called “a global intellectual” (Financial Times). A towering figure in the field of economics, Sen is perhaps best known for his work on poverty and famine, as inspired by events in his boyhood home of West Bengal, India. But Sen has, in fact, called many places “home,” including Dhaka, in modern Bangladesh; Kolkata, where he first studied economics; and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he engaged with the greatest minds of his generation.

In Home in the World, these “homes” collectively form an unparalleled and profoundly truthful vision of twentieth- and twenty-first-century life. Here Sen, “one of the most distinguished minds of our time” (New York Review of Books), interweaves scenes from his remarkable life with candid philosophical reflections on economics, welfare, and social justice, demonstrating how his experiences—in Asia, Europe, and later America—vitally informed his work. In exquisite prose, Sen evokes his childhood travels on the rivers of Bengal, as well as the “quiet beauty” of Dhaka. The Mandalay of Orwell and Kipling is recast as a flourishing cultural center with pagodas, palaces, and bazaars, “always humming with intriguing activities.”

With characteristic moral clarity and compassion, Sen reflects on the cataclysmic events that soon tore his world asunder, from the Bengal famine of 1943 to the struggle for Indian independence against colonial tyranny—and the outbreak of political violence that accompanied the end of British rule. Witnessing these lacerating tragedies only amplified Sen’s sense of social purpose. He went on to study famine and inequality, wholly reconstructing theories of social choice and development. In 1998, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his contributions to welfare economics, which included a fuller understanding of poverty as the deprivation of human capability. Still Sen, a tireless champion of the dispossessed, remains an activist, working now as ever to empower vulnerable minorities and break down walls among warring ethnic groups.

As much a book of penetrating ideas as of people and places, Home in the World is the ultimate “portrait of a citizen of the world” (Spectator), telling an extraordinary story of human empathy across distance and time, and above all, of being at home in the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324091615
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	01/25/2022
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	707,740
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

Amartya Sen is a professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University. A former master of Trinity College, Cambridge, he won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998. His many celebrated books include Development as Freedom and The Idea of Justice.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

A Note on the Spelling of Sanskrit Words xi

Preface xiii

Part 1

1 Dhaka and Mandalay 3

2 The Rivers of Bengal 19

3 School Without Walls 35

4 The Company of Grandparents 57

5 A World of Arguments 79

6 The Presence of the Past 93

Part 2

7 The Last Famine 113

8 Bengal and the Idea of Bangladesh 122

9 Resistance and Division 138

10 Britain and India 155

Part 3

11 The Urbanity of Calcutta 173

12 College Street 190

13 What to Make of Marx 207

14 An Early Battle 223

15 To England 239

Part 4

16 The Gates of Trinity 255

17 Friends and Circles 264

18 What Economics? 282

19 Where is Europe? 295

20 Conversation and Politics 308

21 Between Cambridge and Calcutta 326

22 Dobb, Sraffa and Robertson 342

23 American Encounters 357

24 Cambridge Re-examined 368

Part 5

25 Persuasion and Cooperation 383

26 Near and Far 395

Notes 409

Name Index 426

Subject Index 443

Editorial Reviews

11/15/2021

In this quietly captivating memoir, Nobel Prize–winning economist Sen (The Idea of Justice) traces the influences that fed into his groundbreaking applications of economic theory to alleviate poverty. He begins with his earliest memories as a young student in late 1930s India, recalling how his midwife grandmother’s talk about “unnecessarily high death rates” informed his later work researching maternal mortality, while his mother’s sympathies with Muslims who weren’t allowed to own land awakened his awareness of the role of class in sectarian strife. He also reminisces on his lifelong fascination with abstract reasoning and solutions for ending “earthy practical problems” like hunger, economic deprivations, and famines. Recalling the Bengal famine of 1943—a mass starvation that Sen was eyewitness to at age 10—he notes that even in the midst of millions of impoverished Bengalis dying, “the British public was kept amazingly uninformed.” Through passages animated by his piercing insights into the long history of inequality in India, Sen whisks readers from his college years in Calcutta and graduate studies at Cambridge to his later years lecturing on welfare economics around the globe. What emerges is a contemplative travelogue and a fascinating look into the singular consciousness of one of the world’s foremost thinkers. This is a galvanizing reflection on a roaming life. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Stirred in with Mr. Sen’s memories, which are bright in their detail and freshness, are meditations of various sorts: on the balance-sheet of British rule in India; on the importance of classical languages in a young person’s education; on the philosophical disagreements (of which there were many) between Mahatma Gandhi and the poet Rabindranath Tagore (like Mr. Sen, a Nobel laureate and Bengali); on the ghastly Bengal famine of 1943, which killed three million people; and on the differences between Britain and the U.S. in their respective approaches to an understanding of economics. . . . The most compelling chapters of Mr. Sen’s memoirs are... those that dwell lovingly—even languorously—on his childhood and schooling. . . . [Sen] is an unflinching man of science but also insistently humane. His many ardent admirers regard him as an economist for the downtrodden. How he arrived at his status of global progressive icon would make a compelling storyline for his next memoir."

Wall Street Journal - Tunku Varadarajan

"Charting diverse influences—Gandhi to Rabindranath Tagore to Wittgenstein to Adam Smith—Sen reiterates that his intellectual proclivities have always spilled beyond narrow disciplinary confines . . . his autobiography suggests an enduring commitment to intellectual work with social purpose."

Booklist

"[A] graceful and hopeful book... [A] belief in shared humanity, and an attendant commitment to inclusiveness and tolerance, have been significant to Sen’s body of work, including his desire to connect abstract economic theories with real people and real problems... He joyfully recalls his undergraduate studies in Calcutta, where he spent hours in a local coffeehouse in intense conversation with classmates.... Sen is such a charming and engaging narrator that he makes recaps of quarrels over Keynesian economics appealing – not to mention understandable to laypeople."

Christian Science Monitor - Barbara Spindel

12/01/2021

Nobel Prize-winning economist Sen (Harvard Univ.; Collective Choice and Social Welfare) shares in this memoir the rich and varied professional life that has allowed him to work across the globe and interact with some of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th and 21st centuries. His memories range from his childhood under the British Raj in Dhaka, to school days in Santiniketan at the uniquely progressive school begun by Rabindranath Tagore. Just after World War II, he began his undergraduate degree at Presidency College in Calcutta. While there, he weathered a frightening bout of oral cancer which was treated by high doses of radiation. An exemplary scholar, he continued his studies in economics and philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Having witnessed a famine that killed millions of people in Bengal in 1943, he went on to spend much of his career studying how economic ideas impact the marginalized. His career has taken him not only to Cambridge, but also to Oxford, MIT, Harvard, and Stanford; along the way, he has met and conversed with many well-known academics, including the parents of Kamala Harris. VERDICT A vivid memoir, recommended for those interested in the intersection of economics and social science.—Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

Library Journal

★ 2021-10-02
The Nobel Prize winner fashions a moving, heartfelt memoir of his early life before and after Partition in Bengali India.

Always reflective and erudite, Sen (b. 1933), a professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard, reminisces on his academic and personal influences, creating an engaging portrait of a significant intellectual life. The son of urban Bengalis—his father was an academic who taught at Dhaka University, in what is now Bangladesh, and his mother was a modern dancer—the author traces his early upbringing studying Sanskrit with his father and grandfather, much influenced by the visionary, poet, and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. Sen was sent to Tagore’s school in Shantiniketan, now in West Bengal, India, where he lived with his grandparents (after Partition in 1947, his family would be displaced there) and embarked on a kind of alternative, literary education without exams or corporeal punishment. Sen would incorporate in his later economic training the enormous tragedy of the Bengal famine of 1943, which he witnessed firsthand. “Starvation,” he writes, “is a characteristic of people not being able to buyenough food in the market—not of there being not enough food in the market.” Sen went on to study in Calcutta before moving to Trinity College, Cambridge, and then further advanced studies and research in the U.S. The author smoothly interweaves the rich history of the Bengali culture into his autobiography, often returning to discussions of British influence: “Two hundred years is a long time. What did the British achieve in India, and what did they fail to accomplish?” Sen also provides deeply personal, often moving reflections on the course of his academic work in welfare economics, a subject that was initially dismissed as irrelevant at Cambridge—but that would eventually win him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998.

Illuminating and wonderfully accessible as both an intimate coming-of-age tale and a crash course in economics.

Kirkus Reviews

"Sen is so engaging, so full of charm and has such a clear gift for the graceful sentence. It’s a wonderful book, the portrait of a citizen of the world."

The Spectator [UK] - Philip Hensher

"Sen is more than an economist, a moral philosopher or even an academic. He is a life-long campaigner, through scholarship and activism, via friendships and the occasional enemy, for a more noble idea of home—and therefore of the world."

Financial Times - Edward Luce

Narrator Steven Crossley's upper-class British accent brings an elevated tone to his narration of Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen's memoir. This is a wide-ranging meditation on various stages of Sen's fascinating life. Crossley takes us through Sen’s upbringing as a Bangladeshi national who studied in India and England, and eventually worked in the U.S. Crossley’s quick pace and crisp style capture the many stages of Sen's incredible life, along with his thoughts on refugees, migration, and global economies. Those who want to learn about the man behind this brilliant mind, as well as the history of the subcontinent, will enjoy these lively chapters. Crossley deftly balances the intimate and academic aspects of this multilayered production. M.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2022 - AudioFile

Narrator Steven Crossley's upper-class British accent brings an elevated tone to his narration of Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen's memoir. This is a wide-ranging meditation on various stages of Sen's fascinating life. Crossley takes us through Sen’s upbringing as a Bangladeshi national who studied in India and England, and eventually worked in the U.S. Crossley’s quick pace and crisp style capture the many stages of Sen's incredible life, along with his thoughts on refugees, migration, and global economies. Those who want to learn about the man behind this brilliant mind, as well as the history of the subcontinent, will enjoy these lively chapters. Crossley deftly balances the intimate and academic aspects of this multilayered production. M.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2022 - AudioFile