Author(s): Amitava Kumar

Culture & Ideas

Away brings 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's fictional hero Gabreel Farishta turns London into a tropical city in an excerpt from The Satanic Verses. 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 complex feelings that animate the writings that follow.