Overview

'Strategic thinking for a writer articulates itself as dislike and as allegiance.' In this wonderfully rich and diverse collection of essays, Amit Chaudhuri explores the way in which writers understand and promote their own work in antithesis to writers and movements that have gone before. Chaudhuri's criticism disproves and questions several assumptionsDLthat a serious and original artist cannot think critically in a way that matters; that criticism can't be imaginative, and creative work contain radical argumentation; that a writer reflecting on their own position and practice cannot be more than a testimony of their work, but open up how we think of literary history and reading. Illuminating new ways of thinking about Western and non-Western traditions, prejudices, and preconceptions, Chaudhuri shows us again that he takes nothing as a given: literary tradition, the prevalent definitions of writing and culture; and the way the market determines the way culture and language express themselves. He asks us to look again at what we mean by the modern, and how it might be possible to think of the literary today.

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9780198793823

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Reviews

These essays testify to a formidable intelligence at work. Chaudhuri's engaging yet exacting reflections range widely across literature and the arts. Puncturing intellectual pieties and lazy thinking, they challenge us to rethink how art and the world connect. * Rita Felski, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English, University of Virginia *

These essays testify to a formidable intelligence at work. Chaudhuri's engaging yet exacting reflections range widely across literature and the arts. Puncturing intellectual pieties and lazy thinking, they challenge us to rethink how art and the world connect. * Rita Felski, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English, University of Virginia * Arresting ... It makes at times for compelling reading ... Chaudhuri's love of modernism and its art in various forms is infectious ... this is a fine performance for a select audience by a master of the English language. * Robert Dessaix, Australian Book Review * Drawing on an inimitable knowledge of various texts and traditions, Chaudhuri embarks here on an impressive set of essays which are delivered in an easy and confident prose, deliberating complex ideas in readable, astute language. * Sean Hewitt, Irish Times *

Author Information

Amit Chaudhuri is the author of seven novels, the latest of which is Friend of My Youth. He is also a critic and a musician and composer. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Awards for his fiction include the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Prize, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and the Indian government's Sahitya Akademi Award. In 2013, he was awarded the first Infosys Prize in the Humanities for outstanding contribution to literary studies. He is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia.

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