The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian

by Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Ian Jack (Introduction)

Overview

Beautifully evoking the sights and sounds, rituals and routines of town and countryside, Nirad Chaudhuri’s memoir begins with his childhood in turn-of-the-century Bengal. He then leads the reader through the labyrinth of Calcutta, charting the course of a political and moral education that leaves him a stranger in his own land.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780940322820
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	09/30/2001
Series:	NYRB Classics Series
Pages:	560
Product dimensions:	5.02(w) x 7.97(h) x 1.44(d)

About the Author

Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897–1999) was born in the town of Kishorganj in East Bengal in the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. His first book, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, was published in 1951 and was followed by many others, including The Continent of Circe, for which he won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, and Thy Hand Great Anarch!, a second volume of memoirs. Chaudhuri moved to England in 1970. In 1992 Queen Elizabeth II conferred upon him the title of Honorary Commander of the British Empire.

Ian Jack was the editor of The Independent on Sunday and of Granta. He is the author of The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain and he writes regularly for The Guardian.

Editorial Reviews

Intensely rational, Chaudhuri, a Bengali and author of Thy Hand, Great Anarch! , describes his native country with the intent that ``one part of this world may still retain some curiosity about the combination of man and geography which has worn out the British Empire.'' The autobiography yields a dense, absorbing account of Hindu boyhood (he was born in 1897) in a small village in what is now Bangladesh. Careful observations illuminate a waning culture: ``A Hindu . . . accepts the first wail of birth as the leitmotiv of existence and manages . . . to lead a mock-turtle's life during the whole of it.'' Chaudhuri concludes with intricate analyses of the intellectual history of India before independence, seen in the context of its political and social history (from the Dravidians through the Raj); its religion--the ``reformed'' Hinduism of Swami Vivekananda; and Bengali literature. Chaudhuri's judgments, often surprising, are those of a world citizen; his scholarliness is humbling. (Sept. )

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

**** Reprint of Chaudhuri's 1951 edition (Macmillan, London), which is cited in BCL3. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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