{"title":"Books by Amitava Kumar","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781529062984","title":"A Time Outside This Time","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the acclaimed author of \u003ci\u003eImmigrant, Montana\u003c\/i\u003e comes a one-of-a-kind novel about memory, politics, a world of lies, and the ways in which truth can be not only stranger than fiction, but a fiction of its own.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A shimmering assault on the Zeitgeist.' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e– \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Satya attends a prestigious artists’ retreat, he finds the pressures of the outside world won’t let up: the US president rages online; a dangerous virus envelops the globe; and the twenty-four-hour news cycle throws fuel on every fire. These Orwellian interruptions begin to crystallize into an idea for his new novel about the lies we tell ourselves and each other. Satya scours his life for moments where truth bends toward the imagined, and misinformation is mistaken as fact.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs he sifts through newspaper clippings, the President’s tweets, childhood memories from India, and experiences as an immigrant, a husband, father, and teacher, Amitava Kumar’s \u003ci\u003eA Time Outside This Time\u003c\/i\u003e captures our feverish political moment with a precisely observant intelligence and an eye for the uncanny.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA brilliant meditation on life in a post-truth era, this piercing novel captures the sentiment on all our minds, of how impossible it can feel to remember, or to imagine, a time outside of this one.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43406901477554,"sku":"9781529062984","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781529062984.jpg?v=1786022079"},{"product_id":"9781035013692","title":"My Beloved Life","description":"'This profound book is full of lives whose beauty lies in the wholeness of their telling.' – Salman Rushdie'Kumar's late father’s life breaks like a slowly cresting wave over the sad and joyful ground of this story . . . Always deeply human; the heart is everywhere in these pages . . . beautiful, truthful fiction.' – James Wood, The New YorkerA novel that tells the story of modern India, through the life of one apparently ordinary man, from the death of Gandhi to the rise of Modi.   Jadunath Kunwar's beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. His mother, while pregnant, nearly dies from a cobra bite. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, Jadu finds meaning in the most unexpected places. He meets the sherpa who first summited Everest. 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 perspective sheds its own light on his story.   All the while, currents of huge change sweep across India – from Independence to Partition, Gandhi to Modi, the Mahabharata to Somerset Maugham, cholera to COVID – and buffet both Jadu and Jugnu's lives.   Amitava Kumar's remarkable My Beloved Life explores how we tell stories and write history, how the lives of individuals play out against the background of historical change, and how no single life is without consequence.   'A novel of vaulting ambition and tenderness, about how histories, both personal and national, are built, refracted and revised.' – Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57685819556213,"sku":"9781035013715","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":43605457141938,"sku":"9781035013692","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781035013715.jpg?v=1792599018"},{"product_id":"9781478005827","title":"Every Day I Write the Book","description":"\u003cp\u003eAmitava Kumar's \u003ci\u003eEvery Day I Write the Book\u003c\/i\u003e is for academic writers what Annie Dillard's \u003ci\u003eThe Writing Life\u003c\/i\u003e and Stephen King's \u003ci\u003eOn Writing\u003c\/i\u003e are for creative writers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlongside Kumar's interviews with an array of scholars whose distinct writing offers inspiring examples for students and academics alike, the book's pages are full of practical advice about everything from how to write criticism to making use of a kitchen timer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCommunication, engagement, honesty: these are the aims and sources of good writing. Storytelling, attention to organization, solid work habits: these are its tools.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKumar's own voice is present in his essays about the writing process and in his perceptive and witty observations on the academic world. A writing manual as well as a manifesto, \u003ci\u003eEvery Day I Write the Book\u003c\/i\u003e will interest and guide aspiring writers everywhere.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301025460597,"sku":"9781478005827","price":90.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781478005827_0942b019-ecdc-491b-bbd7-b53a1bf3a570.jpg?v=1786020863"},{"product_id":"9789354893742","title":"The Blue Book","description":"Drawing as a way of keeping a diary, writing down thoughts in a journal as a way of maintaining a historical record - in watercolours and also in words. These were resources that Amitava Kumar had been using even before the pandemic arrived. But the task gained urgency just when he felt most isolated and afraid. The Blue Book is a writer's artistic response to our present world: one that has bestowed upon us countless deaths from a virus, a flood of fake news, but also love in the face of loss, travels through diverse landscapes, and - if we care to notice - visions of blazing beauty. From one of the acclaimed and accomplished authors of our time, this writer's journal is a panoramic portrait of the experience, both individual and collective, of the pandemic.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311086023029,"sku":"9789354893742","price":15.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9789354893742_ba186194-ff68-4889-a718-2ec8d51b9158.jpg?v=1786032026"},{"product_id":"the-lovers","title":"The Lovers","description":"The Lovers is about a man in search of a love story. This man, our narrator, is Kailash-a new immigrant, eager to shine. His friends teasingly call him Kalashnikov and sometimes AK-47, even AK. In his account of his years at a university in New York, AK takes us through the bittersweet arc of youth and love. There is discovery and disappointment. There are the brilliant women, Jennifer and Nina and Cai Yan. There is the political texture of campus life and the charismatic professor overseeing these young men and women, Ehsaan Ali (modelled on the real-life Eqbal Ahmad). Manifest in AK's first years and first loves is the wild enthusiasm of youth, its idealism, chaotic desires and confusions.A decidedly modern novel that melds story and reportage, anecdote and annotation, picture and text, fragment and essay, The Lovers reminds us of the works of John Berger and Teju Cole. Funny, meditative and shot through with waves of longing, the book explores feelings of discomfort about cultural misunderstandings and the lack of clarity between men and women. At heart though, it is an investigation of love-'love despite, or in spite of; love beyond and across dividing lines'.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57695184585077,"sku":"9789386021007","price":21.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9789386021007.jpg?v=1793031770"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-amitava-kumar.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}