Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate

In the past twenty years, Indian writers have won wide praise in the West. Many of the best live outside the Subcontinent - in England, the United States, and Canada.Awaybrings together great writing by figures from South Asia who give voice to the experience of the exile and the emigrant. R.K. Narayan writes of his first visit to America. Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, writes of his first trip by airplane. Salman Rushdie eats "the eggs of love" in a Sandinista camp in Nicaragua. V.S. Naipaul describes his sister's funeral ceremony in Trinidad, while the poet Sarojini Naidu sends love letters home to her husband. The memoirist Ved Mehta recounts applying for an American visa. The rising politician Jawaharlal Nehru asks for news from India as he travels across the world campaigning for freedom. This star-studded list of contributors also includes Hanif Kureishi, Rohinton Mistry, Meera Syal, and others. Amitava Kumar's introduction beautifully sets out the complexfeelings that animate the writings that follow.Awayis a feast.