3 Review(s)

People travel; books do too. Bombay-London-New York is a way of measuring the distances that people and books travel. Interweaving the personal and professional, Amitava Kumar blurs the line between literary criticism and memoir in this lucid chronicle of migration and writer development. The central narrative in this book concerns the movement between the cities named in its title, although its conceit is that the journey truly lies in the realm of books and memories. Cities thus become venues for recollection and re-creation in the mind of the Indian writer of the diaspora, and also sites for literary construction. In this bold sequel to Passport Photos, Amitava Kumar continues his efforts to return postcolonial studies to a sense of lived daily-ness. Combining thoughts on such varied figures as Arundhati Roy, Laloo Prasad Yadav and Safdar Hashmi with his own insights into literature and contemporary life, he delivers a highly engrossing and memorable text in his appreciation of the immigrant condition.