Product Description: To be a writer, Amitava Kumar says, is to be an observer. The twenty-six essays in Lunch with a Bigot are Kumar's observations of the world put into words. A mix of memoir, reportage, and criticism, the essays include encounters with writers Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, discussions on the craft of writing, and a portrait of the struggles of a Bollywood actor...read more

It is not only the past that lies in ruins in Patna, it is also the present. But that is not the only truth about the city that Amitava Kumar explores in this vivid, entertaining account of his hometown. We accompany him through many Patnas, the myriad cities locked within the city—the shabby reality of the present-day capital of Bihar; Pataliputra, the storied city of emperors; the dreamlike embodiment of the city in the minds and hearts of those who have escaped contemporary Patna's confines. Full of fascinating observations and impressions, A Matter of Rats reveals a challenging and enduring city that exerts a lasting pull on all those who drift into its orbit.Kumar's ruminations on one of the world's oldest cities, the capital of India's poorest province, are also a meditation on how to write about place. His memory is partial. All he has going for him is his attentiveness. He carefully observes everything that surrounds him in Patna: rats and poets, artists and politicians, a girl's picture in a historian's study, and a sheet of paper on his mother's desk. The result is this unique book, as cutting as it is honest.

Product Description: Where Do We Migrate To? explores displacement and exile through the work of 19 artists and collectives, including Acconci Studio, Svetlana Boym, Blane De St. Croix, Lara Dhondt, Brendan Fernandes, Claire Fontaine, Nicole Franchy, Andrea Geyer, Isola & Norzi, Kimsooja, Pedro Lasch, Adrian Piper, Raqs Media Collective, Société Réaliste, Julika Rudelius, Xaviera Simmons, Fereshteh Toosi, Philippe Vandenberg and Eric Van Hove...read more

A Hindu Indian writer living and teaching in the United States describes his turbulent marriage to a Pakistani Muslim woman, which prompted his investigation into the long-standing conflict between Indians, Pakistanis, Hindus, and Muslims as reflected in classrooms, Web sites, psychiatric wards, and more.

Product Description: For more than a generation, Indian writers in English have won praise in the West. The roll call of Indian-born writers is startling: Rushdie, Mukerjee, Mehta, Ghosh, Naipaul, Kureishi, Narayan, Mistry, among many others.Amitava Kumar, himself an Indian writer now 'away' in America, is editing a broad anthology of work by Indian writers whose lives and literary identities have been formed by their experiences in some form of exile...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: World Bank literature is more than a concept -- it is a provocation, a call to arms. It is intended to prompt questions about each word, to probe globalization, political economy, and the role of literary and cultural studies. As asserted in this major work, it signals a radical rewriting of academic debates, a rigorous analysis of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and a consideration of literature that deals with new global realities...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Product Description: Passport Photos, a self-conscious act of artistic and intellectual forgery, is a report on the immigrant condition. A multigenre book combining theory, poetry, cultural criticism, and photography, it explores the complexities of the immigration experience, intervening in the impersonal language of the state...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

On the contested terrain of cultural studies, the debate has often focused on the blurring of the line between the poetic and the political. The future of the academic profession, the move toward a return to "literary readings," and the function/usefulness of art and poetry today are all tied up in this issue. The real need, however, is to complicate the argument between the two, and this volume addresses that need by using the classroom as the specific site for that critical practice. The essays in this volume attempt to ask why the poetic and the political seem at odds in today’s society, literature, and current events. The contributors do not so much instantiate the hitherto hidden relation between politics and aesthetics, but instead provide occasions to reexamine and complicate the relationship between them. (view table of contents)

Product Description: The university classroom has been turned into an intensely bitter battlefield. Conservatives are attacking the academy's ability to teach, and at times its very right to educate. As the dust begins to settle, the contributors to this volume weigh in with a constructive and wide-ranging statement on the progressive possibilities of teaching...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)