An absorbing, exceptionally moving novel that traces the arc of a man’s life, an ordinary life made exceptional by the fact that he has loved and has been loved in turn
Author: Amitava Kumar Format: Hardcover, Paperback Publisher: Knopf Publication date: February 27, 2024 Pages: 352 Language: English ISBN: 9780593536063
Jadunath Kunwar’s beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. In 1935 in a village near George Orwell’s birthplace, Jadu’s mother, while pregnant with him, nearly dies from a cobra bite. When we see Jadu again, he is in college, meeting the Sherpa who first summited Everest and wondering what it means to be modern. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, and as changes big and small sweep across India, Jadu finds meaning in the most unexpected places. 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 own story recasts the past in a new light. Piercing, fleet-footed, and undeniably resonant, here is a novel from a singularly gifted writer about how we tell stories and write history, how individuals play a counterpoint to big movements, how no single life is without consequence.
About the Author
Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of nonfiction and four novels. His new novel is My Beloved Life. Kumar's novel Immigrant, Montana was on the best of the year lists at The New Yorker, The New York Times, and President Obama’s list of favorite books of 2018. His last novel A Time Outside This Time was described by the New Yorker magazine as “a shimmering assault on the Zeitgeist.” Kumar's nonfiction books include The Blue Book: A Writer's Journal; Every Day I Write the Book; A Matter of Rats; Lunch With a Bigot; A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm A Tiny Bomb; and, Husband of a Fanatic. Kumar's work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Harper’s, Guernica, The Nation and several other publications., a collection of drawings and diary entries about the pandemic, was recently published by HarperCollins India. Kumar has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and residencies from Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Lannan Foundation. He is currently a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. More at www.amitavakumar.com
Reviews
“Kumar is an observer to his core. He successfully enumerates the many forces and influences that shape an individual life.”
The New York Times Book Review
“Kumar seamlessly juxtaposes historical events with the everyday concerns of his characters . . . and renders it all in such masterful prose that the ordinary becomes extraordinary.”
California Review of Books
“An immersive, moving portrait that steadily gains intensity, vividness, and surprise . . . It pays tribute to two people who make noticing, attentiveness, and storytelling the central pillars of their lives.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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