Amitava Kumar
Amitava Kumar is a novelist, poet, journalist, and Professor of English at Vassar College. He was born in Bihar, India; he grew up in the town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty, and delicious mangoes.He is the author of Nobody Does the Right Thing; A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb; Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate, a New York Times “Editors’ Choice” selection; Bombay—London—New York, a New Statesman (UK) “Book of the Year” selection; and Passport Photos. He is the editor of several books, including Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate, The Humour and the Pity: Essays on V. S. Naipaul, and World Bank Literature. He is also an editor of the online journal Politics and Culture and the screenwriter and narrator of the prize-winning documentary film Pure Chutney.Kumar’s writing has appeared in The Nation, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, The American Prospect, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hindu, and other publications in North America and India.
Immigrant, Montana
Amitava Kumar
One winter morning, a monkey stole into Mamaji's room. He climbed on the huge white bed and finding Mamaji's pistol brandished it - they say - at my cousin, born two months after me and still in her crib. No one moved. Then, turning the pistol around, the primate brain prompting the opposable thumb to grasp the trigger, the monkey blew his brains out.Meet Kailash. AKA Kalashnikov. Or AK-47. Or just plain AK. His journey from India has taken him to graduate school in New York where he keeps falling in not only with women - Jennifer, Nina, Cai Yan - but with literature and radical politics, the fuel of youthful exuberance. Each heady affair brings new about himself, about America, and his relationship to a country founded on immigration, but a country that is now unsure of the migrant's place in the nation's fabric. How do you educate yourself in belonging when you are in a constant state of exile?Immigrant, Montana is the story of AK's sentimental education. His intellectual, emotional, and romantic journey gives the book a new narrative form, one that thrillingly reinvents the campus and postcolonial novel through wry, comic intelligence. A sharp cultural satire for a generation losing an ideological sense of itself, Immigrant, Montana is erotic and tender, provocative and playful - a meditation on courage and endeavour, and what it takes to truly be heroic.
Every Day I Write the Book: Notes on Style
Amitava Kumar
Amitava Kumar's Every Day I Write the Book is for academic writers what Annie Dillard's The Writing Life and Stephen King's On Writing are for creative writers. Alongside 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. Communication, engagement, these are the aims and sources of good writing. Storytelling, attention to organization, solid work these are its tools. Kumar'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, Every Day I Write the Book will interest and guide aspiring writers everywhere.
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