Podcast appearances and mentions of arvind krishna mehrotra

He's a poet, art critic, curator, translator, cultural theorist -- and someone who helps make sense of our world. Ranjit Hoskote joins Amit Varma in episode 363 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about his life, his times and his work. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Ranjit Hoskote on Twitter, Instagram and Amazon. 2. Jonahwhale -- Ranjit Hoskote. 3. Hunchprose -- Ranjit Hoskote. 4. I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Dĕd -- Translated by Ranjit Hoskote. 5. Poet's nightmare -- Ranjit Hoskote. 6. State of enrichment -- Ranjit Hoskote. 7. Nissim Ezekiel, AK Ramanujan, Arun Kolatkar, Keki Daruwalla, Dom Moraes, Dilip Chitre, Gieve Patel, Vilas Sarang, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Agha Shahid Ali, Mani Rao, Mustansir Dalvi, Jerry Pinto, Sampurna Chattarji, Vivek Narayanan and Arundhathi Subramaniam. 8. Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill, Seamus Heaney, Sharon Olds, Louise Glück, Jorie Graham and Rita Dove. 9. The Life and Times of Shanta Gokhale — Episode 311 of The Seen and the Unseen. 10. The Life and Times of Jerry Pinto — Episode 314 of The Seen and the Unseen. 11. कुँवर नारायण, केदारनाथ सिंह, अशोक वाजपेयी and नागार्जुन. 12. Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Bismillah Khan, Igor Straviksky, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Steve Reich and Terry Riley. 13. Palgrave's Golden Treasury: From Shakespeare to the Present. 14. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 15. Sara Rai Inhales Literature — Episode 255 of The Seen and the Unseen. 16. The Art of Translation — Episode 168 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Arunava Sinha). 17. Arun Khopkar, Mani Kaul and Clement Greenberg. 18. Stalker -- Andrei Tarkovsky. 19. The Sacrifice -- Andrei Tarkovsky. 20. Ivan's Childhood -- Andrei Tarkovsky. 21. The Color of Pomegranates -- Sergei Parajanov. 22. Ranjit Hoskote's tribute on Instagram to Gieve Patel. 23. Father Returning Home -- Dilip Chitre. 24. Jejuri -- Arun Kolatkar. 25. Modern Poetry in Translation -- Magazine and publisher founded by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort. 26. On Exactitude in Science — Jorge Luis Borges. 27. How Music Works — David Byrne. 28. CBGB. 29. New York -- Lou Reed. 30. How This Nobel Has Redefined Literature — Amit Varma on Dylan winning the Nobel Prize. 31. The Fire and the Rain -- Girish Karnad. 32. Vanraj Bhatia on Wikipedia and IMDb. 33. Amit Varma's tweet thread on Jonahwhale. 34. Magic Fruit: A Poetic Trip -- Vaishnav Vyas. 35. Glenn Gould on Spotify. 36. Danish Husain and the Multiverse of Culture -- Episode 359 of The Seen and the Unseen. 37. Steven Fowler. 38. Serious Noticing -- James Wood. 39. How Fiction Works -- James Wood. 40. The Spirit of Indian Painting -- BN Goswamy. 41. Conversations -- BN Goswamy. 42. BN Goswamy on Wikipedia and Amazon. 43. BN Goswamy (1933-2023): Sage and Sensitivity -- Ranjit Hoskote. 44. Joseph Fasano's thread on his writing exercises. 45. Narayan Surve on Wikipedia and Amazon. 46. Steven Van Zandt: Springsteen, the death of rock and Van Morrison on Covid — Richard Purden. 47. 1000 True Fans — Kevin Kelly. 48. 1000 True Fans? Try 100 — Li Jin. 49. Future Shock -- Alvin Toffler. 50. The Third Wave -- Alvin Toffler. 51. The Long Tail -- Chris Anderson. 52. Ranjit Hoskote's resignation letter from the panel of Documenta. 53. Liquid Modernity -- Zygmunt Bauman. 54. Rahul Matthan Seeks the Protocol -- Episode 360 of The Seen and the Unseen. 55. Panopticon. 56. Tron -- Steven Lisberger. 57. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India — Akshaya Mukul. 58. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism — Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 59. Ramchandra Gandhi on Wikipedia and Amazon. 60. Majma-ul-Bahrain (also known as Samudra Sangam Grantha) -- Dara Shikoh. 61. Early Indians — Tony Joseph. 62. Tony Joseph's episode on The Seen and the Unseen. 63. Who We Are and How We Got Here — David Reich. 64. पुराण स्थल. 65. The Indianness of Indian Food — Episode 95 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vikram Doctor). 66. The Refreshing Audacity of Vinay Singhal — Episode 291 of The Seen and the Unseen. 67. The Speaking Tree: A Study of Indian Culture and Society -- Richard Lannoy. 68. Clifford Geertz, John Berger and Arthur C Danto. 69. The Ascent of Man (book) (series) -- Jacob Bronowski. 70. Civilization (book) (series) -- Kenneth Clark. 71. Cosmos (book) (series) -- Carl Sagan. 72. Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Stephen Jay Gould and Oliver Sacks. 73. Raag Darbari (Hindi) (English) — Shrilal Shukla.. 74. Raag Darbari on Storytel. 75. Krishnamurti's Notebook -- J Krishnamurty. 76. Shame -- Salman Rushdie. 77. Marcovaldo -- Italo Calvino. 78. Metropolis -- Fritz Lang. 79. Mahanagar -- Satyajit Ray. 80. A Momentary Lapse of Reason -- Pink Floyd. 81. Learning to Fly -- Pink Floyd, 82. Collected poems -- Mark Strand. Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art: ‘Dancing in Chains' by Simahina.

Poet, novelist, translator, journalist, crime fiction writer, children's book author, teacher, math tutor: now here is a man who contains multitudes. Jerry Pinto joins Amit Varma in episode 314 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about his life and learnings. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Jerry Pinto on Instagram, Amazon and his own website. 2. Em and the Big Hoom -- Jerry Pinto. 3. The Education of Yuri -- Jerry Pinto. 4. Murder in Mahim -- Jerry Pinto. 5. A Book of Light -- Edited by Jerry Pinto. 6. Baluta -- Daya Pawar (translated by Jerry Pinto). 7. I Have Not Seen Mandu -- Swadesh Deepak (translated by Jerry Pinto). 8. Cobalt Blue -- Sachin Kundalkar (translated by Jerry Pinto). 9. The Life and Times of Shanta Gokhale -- Episode 311 of The Seen and the Unseen. 10. ‘Sometimes I feel I have to be completely invisible as a poet' -- Jerry Pinto's interview of Adil Jussawalla. 11. A Godless Congregation — Amit Varma. 12. The Rooted Cosmopolitanism of Sugata Srinivasaraju — Episode 277 of The Seen and the Unseen. 13. The Big Questions — Steven E Landsburg. 14. Unlikely is Inevitable — Amit Varma. 15. The Law of Truly Large Numbers. 16. The Gentle Wisdom of Pratap Bhanu Mehta — Episode 300 of The Seen and the Unseen. 17. Young India — Episode 83 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Snigdha Poonam). 18. Dreamers — Snigdha Poonam. 19. The Loneliness of the Indian Man — Episode 303 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Nikhil Taneja). 20. The History Boys -- Alan Bennett. 21. The Connell Guide to How to Write Well -- Tim de Lisle. 22. Thinking Better: The Art of the Shortcut -- Marcus Du Sautoy. 23. Dead Poet's Society -- Peter Weir. 24. A Mathematician's Apology -- GH Hardy. 25. The Man Who Knew Infinity -- Robert Kanigel. 26. David Berlinski and Martin Gardner on Amazon, and Mukul Sharma on Wikipedia.. 27. Range Rover -- The archives of Amit Varma's column on poker for The Economic Times. 28. Luck is All Around -- Amit Varma. 29. Stoicism on Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Britannica. 30. House of the Dead —  Fyodor Dostoevsky. 31. Black Beauty -- Anna Sewell. 32. Lady Chatterley's Lover -- DH Lawrence. 33. Mr Norris Changes Trains -- Chistopher Isherwood. 34. Sigrid Undset on Amazon and Wikipedia. 35. Some Prefer Nettles -- Junichiro Tanizaki. 36. Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe. 37. Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy on Amazon. 38. Orientalism -- Edward Said. 39. Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Kurt Vonnegut on Amazon. 40. Johnny Got His Gun -- Dalton Trumbo. 41. Selected Poems -- Kamala Das. 42. Collected Poems -- Kamala Das. 43. In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones — Pradip Krishen. 44. Dance Dance For the Halva Waala — Episode 294 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jai Arjun Singh and Subrat Mohanty). 45. Tosca -- Giacomo Puccini. 46. Civilisation by Kenneth Clark on YouTube and Wikipedia. 47. Archives of The World This Week. 48. Dardi Rab Rab Kardi -- Daler Mehndi. 49. Is Old Music Killing New Music? — Ted Gioia. 50. Mother India (Mehboob Khan) and Mughal-E-Azam (K Asif). 51. A Meditation on Form — Amit Varma. 52. Sara Rai Inhales Literature — Episode 255 of The Seen and the Unseen. 53. Collected Poems — Mark Strand. 54. Forgive Me, Mother -- Eunice de Souza. 55. Porphyria's Lover -- Robert Browning. 56. Island -- Nissim Ezekiel. 57. Paper Menagerie — Ken Liu. 58. Jhumpa Lahiri on Writing, Translation, and Crossing Between Cultures — Episode 17 of Conversations With Tyler. 59. The Notebook Trilogy — Agota Kristof. 60. Amitava Kumar Finds the Breath of Life — Episode 265 of The Seen and the Unseen. 61. The Blue Book: A Writer's Journal — Amitava Kumar. 62. Nissim Ezekiel on Amazon, Wikipedia and All Poetry. 63. Adil Jussawalla on Amazon, Wikipedia and Poetry International. 64. Eunice de Souza on Amazon, Wikipedia and Poetry International. 65. Dom Moraes on Amazon, Wikipedia and Poem Hunter. 66. WH Auden and Stephen Spender on Amazon. 67. Pilloo Pochkhanawala on Wikipedia and JNAF. 68. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra on Amazon, Wikipedia and Poetry Foundation. 69. Amar Akbar Anthony -- Manmohan Desai. 67. Ranjit Hoskote on Amazon, Instagram, Twitter, Wikipedia and Poetry International. 71. Arundhathi Subramaniam on Amazon, Instagram, Wikipedia, Poetry International and her own website. 72. The Red Wheelbarrow -- William Carlos Williams. 73. Mary Oliver's analysis of The Red Wheelbarrow. 74. A Poetry Handbook — Mary Oliver. 75. The War Against Cliche -- Martin Amis. 76. Seamus Heaney on Amazon, Wikipedia and Poetry Foundation. 77. The world behind 'Em and the Big Hoom' -- Jerry Pinto interviewed by Swetha Amit. 78. Jerry Pinto interviewed for the New York Times by Max Bearak. 79. Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and GV Desani on Amazon. 80. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen on the creator ecosystem with Roshan Abbas, Varun Duggirala, Neelesh Misra, Snehal Pradhan, Chuck Gopal, Nishant Jain, Deepak Shenoy and Abhijit Bhaduri. 81. Graham Greene, W Somerset Maugham and Aldous Huxley on Amazon. 82. Surviving Men -- Shobhaa De. 83. Surviving Men -- Jerry Pinto. 84. The Essays of GK Chesterton. 85. The Life and Times of Nilanjana Roy — Episode 284 of The Seen and the Unseen. 86. City Improbable: Writings on Delhi -- Edited by Khushwant Singh. 87. Bombay, Meri Jaan -- Edited by Jerry Pinto and Naresh Fernandes. 88. The Life and Times of Urvashi Butalia — Episode 287 of The Seen and the Unseen. 89. Films, Feminism, Paromita — Episode 155 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Paromita Vohra). 90. Wanting -- Luke Burgis. 91. Kalpish Ratna and Sjowall & Wahloo on Amazon. 92. Memories and Things — Episode 195 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aanchal Malhotra). 93. Ashad ka Ek Din -- Mohan Rakesh. 94. Anna Karenina -- Leo Tolstoy (translated by Constance Garnett). 95. Gordon Lish: ‘Had I not revised Carver, would he be paid the attention given him? Baloney!' -- Christian Lorentzen.. 96. Sooraj Barjatya and Yash Chopra. 97. The Life and Times of Mrinal Pande — Episode 263 of The Seen and the Unseen. 98. Don't think too much of yourself. You're an accident — Amit Varma. 99. Phineas Gage. 100. Georges Simenon on Amazon and Wikipedia.. 101. The Interpreter -- Amit Varma on Michael Gazzaniga's iconic neuroscience experiment. 102. The Life and Times of Abhinandan Sekhri — Episode 254 of The Seen and the Unseen.. 103. Madame Bovary -- Gustave Flaubert. 104. Self-Portrait — AK Ramanujan. 105. Ivan Turgenev, Ryu Murakami and Patricia Highsmith on Amazon. 106. A Clockwork Orange -- Anthony Burgess. 107. On Exactitude in Science — Jorge Luis Borges. 110. Playwright at the Centre: Marathi Drama from 1843 to the Present — Shanta Gokhale. 111. Kubla Khan -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 112. Girish Shahane, Naresh Fernandes, Suketu Mehta, David Godwin and Kiran Desai. 113. The Count of Monte Cristo -- Alexandre Dumas. 114. Pedro Almodóvar and Yasujirō Ozu. 115. The Art of Translation — Episode 168 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Arunava Sinha). 116. The Lives of the Poets -- Samuel Johnson. 117. Lives of the Women -- Various authors, edited by Jerry Pinto. 118. Lessons from an Ankhon Dekhi Prime Minister — Amit Varma. 119. On Bullshit — Harry Frankfurt. 120. The Facts Do Not Matter — Amit Varma. 121. Beware of the Useful Idiots — Amit Varma. 122. Modi's Lost Opportunity — Episode 119 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Salman Soz). 123. Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala. 124. The Importance of Data Journalism — Episode 196 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rukmini S). 125. Rukmini Sees India's Multitudes — Episode 261 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rukmini S). 126. Pramit Bhattacharya Believes in Just One Ism — Episode 256 of The Seen and the Unseen. 127. Listen, The Internet Has SPACE -- Amit Varma.. 128. Fixing Indian Education — Episode 185 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Muralidharan). 129. The Reflections of Samarth Bansal — Episode 299 of The Seen and the Unseen. 130. The Saturdays -- Elizabeth Enwright. 131. Summer of My German Soldier -- Bette Greene. 132. I am David -- Anne Holm. 133. Tove Jannson and Beatrix Potter on Amazon. 134. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings -- JRR Tolkien. 135. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness -- William Styron. 136. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness -- Kay Redfield Jamison. 137. Searching for Swadesh -- Nirupama Dutt.. 138. Parsai Rachanawali -- Harishankar Parsai. 139. Not Dark Yet (official) (newly released outtake) -- Bob Dylan.. 140. How This Nobel Has Redefined Literature -- Amit Varma on Dylan winning the Nobel Prize.. 141. The New World Upon Us — Amit Varma. 142. PG Wodehouse on Amazon and Wikipedia. 143. I Heard the Owl Call My Name -- Margaret Craven. 144. 84, Charing Cross Road -- Helen Hanff. 145. Great Expectations, Little Dorrit and Bleak House -- Charles Dickens. 146. Middlemarch -- George Eliot. 147. The Pillow Book -- Sei Shonagon. 148. The Diary of Lady Murasaki -- Murasaki Shikibu. 149. My Experiments With Truth -- Mohandas Gandhi. 150. Ariel -- Sylvia Plath. 151. Jejuri -- Arun Kolatkar. 152. Missing Person -- Adil Jussawalla. 153. All About H Hatterr -- GV Desani. 154. The Ground Beneath Her Feet -- Salman Rushdie. 155. A Fine Balance -- Rohinton Mistry. 156. Tales from Firozsha Baag -- Rohinton Mistry. 157. Amores Perros -- Alejandro G Iñárritu. 158. Samira Makhmalbaf on Wikipedia and IMDb. 159. Ingmar Bergman on Wikipedia and IMDb. 160. The Silence, Autumn Sonata and Wild Strawberries - Ingmar Bergman. 161. The Mahabharata. 162. Yuganta — Irawati Karve. 163. Kalyug -- Shyam Benegal. 164. The Hungry Tide -- Amitav Ghosh. 165. On Hinduism and The Hindus -- Wendy Doniger. 166. I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Dĕd — Lal Dĕd (translated by Ranjit Hoskote). 167. The Essential Kabir -- Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. 168. The Absent Traveller -- Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. 169. These My Words: The Penguin Book of Indian Poetry -- Edited by Eunice de Souza and Melanie Silgardo. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art: ‘He is Reading' by Simahina.

Borders and nation states can sometimes seek to divide communities -- but isn't that a bit like cutting water with a knife? Saaz Aggarwal joins Amit Varma in episode 308 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss her work chronicling the history and culture of the Sindhi people -- and her own rich life as a writer and artist. (For full linked show notes, go to SeenUnseen.in.) Also check out: 1. Saaz Aggarwal on Amazon, Instagram, LinkedIn, Scroll, Open and her own website. 2. Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland -- Saaz Aggarwal. 3. Sindhi Tapestry: Reflections on the Sindhi Identity -- Saaz Aggarwal. 4. The Amils of Sindh: A Narrative History of a Remarkable Community -- Saaz Aggarwal. 5. Losing Home: Finding Home -- Saaz Aggarwal, with illustrations by Subhodeep Mukherjee. 6. The Six Sigma Dabbawalas of Mumbai -- Samatvam Academy. 7. That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen — Frédéric Bastiat. 8. Frédéric Bastiat's writings at Bastiat.org and Amazon. 9. Remembering Frédéric Bastiat (2007) — Amit Varma. 10. Autobiography of Malcolm X -- Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley. 11. A Shot At History: My Obsessive Journey to Olympic Gold -- Abhinav Bindra with Rohit Brijnath. 12. Odyssey: My Journey Through Life -- Nandlal P Tolani with Saaz Aggarwal. 13. Veda Aggarwal's website. 14. Comparative Advantage. 15. Caste, Capitalism and Chandra Bhan Prasad -- Episode 296 of The Seen and the Unseen. 16. ‘Indian languages carry the legacy of caste' — Chandra Bhan Prasad interviewed by Sheela Bhatt. 17. The Loneliness of the Indian Woman — Episode 259 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shrayana Bhattacharya). 18. Vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org. 19. India Moving — Chinmay Tumbe. 20. India = Migration — Episode 128 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Chinmay Tumbe). 21. Rekhta. 22. The Refreshing Audacity of Vinay Singhal — Episode 291 of The Seen and the Unseen. 23. Stage.in. 24. Nanak Was Here — Episode 166 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Amardeep Singh). 25. Songs of Kabir -- Kabit, translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. 26. Doorway To Sindh -- Aruna Madnani's project. 27. In defence of suit, boot — Chandra Bhan Prasad. 28. The Good Lion -- Ernest Hemingway. 29. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen with Ajay Shah: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 30. Eye Cosmetic ‘Surma': Hidden Threats of Lead Poisoning -- K Goswami, 31. Nandita Bhavnani on Amazon and YouTube. 32. Toba Tek Singh -- Sadat Hasan Manto. 33. Memories and Things — Episode 195 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aanchal Malhotra). 34. Remnants of a Separation — Aanchal Malhotra. 35. Beyond the Rainbow -- Murli Melwani. 36. Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth, Douglas Adams, Leslie Thomas and PG Wodehouse on Amazon. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art: ‘Tapestry' by Simahina. *** Errata: Contrary to what I said in the introduction to this episode, It was Saaz's mother and not Saaz who was born a Bijlani. Apologies! -- AV

Roanne Kantor tells us about World Literature, in the ideas and practices of readers, writers, and scholars. Spatial metaphors like libraries, closets, and airport bookshops, help her imagine the “world” in world literature. In the episode Roanne references work by many scholars in the field, including David Damrosch's What is World Literature (Princeton UP, 2003); Debjani Ganguly's This Thing Called the World (Duke UP, 2016), and Gloria Fisk's Orhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature (Columbia UP, 2018). In the longer version of our conversation, we talked about how little magazines from the 1970s New York literary scene, like Ed Sanders' Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts, circulated in South Asia, inspiring avant-garde magazines like Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's damn you/a magazine of the arts. Roanne is an assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. She has a brand new book, South Asian Writers, Latin American Literature, and the Rise of Global English, (Cambridge UP, 2022). If you want to learn more about the world of world lit, check it out. This week's image of an airport bookshop at the Incheon International Airport in South Korea, was photographed by Adli Wahid and made publicly available on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons License. Music used in promotional material: ‘Six More Weeks' by Evening Fires Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Roanne Kantor tells us about World Literature, in the ideas and practices of readers, writers, and scholars. Spatial metaphors like libraries, closets, and airport bookshops, help her imagine the “world” in world literature. In the episode Roanne references work by many scholars in the field, including David Damrosch's What is World Literature (Princeton UP, 2003); Debjani Ganguly's This Thing Called the World (Duke UP, 2016), and Gloria Fisk's Orhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature (Columbia UP, 2018). In the longer version of our conversation, we talked about how little magazines from the 1970s New York literary scene, like Ed Sanders' Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts, circulated in South Asia, inspiring avant-garde magazines like Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's damn you/a magazine of the arts. Roanne is an assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. She has a brand new book, South Asian Writers, Latin American Literature, and the Rise of Global English, (Cambridge UP, 2022). If you want to learn more about the world of world lit, check it out. This week's image of an airport bookshop at the Incheon International Airport in South Korea, was photographed by Adli Wahid and made publicly available on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons License. Music used in promotional material: ‘Six More Weeks' by Evening Fires Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Roanne Kantor tells us about World Literature, in the ideas and practices of readers, writers, and scholars. Spatial metaphors like libraries, closets, and airport bookshops, help her imagine the “world” in world literature. In the episode Roanne references work by many scholars in the field, including David Damrosch's What is World Literature (Princeton UP, 2003); Debjani Ganguly's This Thing Called the World (Duke UP, 2016), and Gloria Fisk's Orhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature (Columbia UP, 2018). In the longer version of our conversation, we talked about how little magazines from the 1970s New York literary scene, like Ed Sanders' Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts, circulated in South Asia, inspiring avant-garde magazines like Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's damn you/a magazine of the arts. Roanne is an assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. She has a brand new book, South Asian Writers, Latin American Literature, and the Rise of Global English, (Cambridge UP, 2022). If you want to learn more about the world of world lit, check it out. This week's image of an airport bookshop at the Incheon International Airport in South Korea, was photographed by Adli Wahid and made publicly available on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons License. Music used in promotional material: ‘Six More Weeks' by Evening Fires Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Roanne Kantor tells us about World Literature, in the ideas and practices of readers, writers, and scholars. Spatial metaphors like libraries, closets, and airport bookshops, help her imagine the “world” in world literature. In the episode Roanne references work by many scholars in the field, including David Damrosch's What is World Literature (Princeton UP, 2003); Debjani Ganguly's This Thing Called the World (Duke UP, 2016), and Gloria Fisk's Orhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature (Columbia UP, 2018). In the longer version of our conversation, we talked about how little magazines from the 1970s New York literary scene, like Ed Sanders' Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts, circulated in South Asia, inspiring avant-garde magazines like Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's damn you/a magazine of the arts. Roanne is an assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. She has a brand new book, South Asian Writers, Latin American Literature, and the Rise of Global English, (Cambridge UP, 2022). If you want to learn more about the world of world lit, check it out. This week's image of an airport bookshop at the Incheon International Airport in South Korea, was photographed by Adli Wahid and made publicly available on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons License. Music used in promotional material: ‘Six More Weeks' by Evening Fires Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A lifetime spent reading, writing and reflecting teaches you a lot. Nilanjana Roy joins Amit Varma in episode 284 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about books, feminism, family, memory and the state of the world.  Also check out:1. Nilanjana Roy on Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, Financial Times, Business Standard and her own website. 2. The Girl Who Ate Books: Adventures in Reading -- Nilanjana Roy. 3. The Wildings -- Nilanjana Roy. 4. The Hundred Names of Darkness -- Nilanjana Roy. 5. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen that discuss reading and writing with Sara Rai, Amitava Kumar, VK Karthika, Sugata Srinivasaraju, Mrinal Pande, Sonia Faleiro, Vivek Tejuja, Samanth Subramanian, Annie Zaidi and Prem Panicker. 6.  Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen on the creator ecosystem with Roshan Abbas, Varun Duggirala, Neelesh Misra, Snehal Pradhan, Chuck Gopal, Nishant Jain, Deepak Shenoy and Abhijit Bhaduri. 7. A Meditation on Form -- Amit Varma. 8. Why Are My Episodes so Long? -- Amit Varma. 9. The Prem Panicker Files -- Episode 217 of The Seen and the Unseen. 10. Jonathan Haidt on Amazon. 11. Where Have All the Leaders Gone? -- Amit Varma. 12. The Ranga-Billa Case. 13. Sarojini Naidu on Amazon. 14. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. 15. The Mahatma and the Poet — The letters between Gandhi and Tagore, compiled by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya. 16. Amitava Kumar Finds the Breath of Life -- Episode 265 of The Seen and the Unseen. 17. Margaret Mascarenhas on Amazon. 18. The Web We Have to Save -- Hossein Derakhshan. 19. The Country Without a Post Office -- Agha Shahid Ali. 20. Wanting — Luke Burgis. 21. René Girard on Amazon and Wikipedia. 22. The Silence of Scheherazade -- Defne Suman. 23. Silver -- Walter de la Mare. 24. Lessons from an Ankhon Dekhi Prime Minister — Amit Varma. 25. George Saunders and Barack Obama on Amazon. 26. A life in 5,000 books -- Nilanjana Roy. 27. Surender Mohan Pathak, Ibne Safi and Gabriel Garcia Marquez on Amazon.  28. The Power Broker — Robert Caro. 29. The Death and Life of Great American Cities — Jane Jacobs. 30. JRR Tolkien, Ursula Le Guin and Terry Pratchett on Amazon. 31. Forget reading Thomas Piketty. Try a bit of Terry Pratchett -- Robert Shrimsley. 32. Fifty Shades of Grey -- EL James. 33. Ankur Warikoo, Aanchal Malhotra, Manu Pillai and Ira Mukhoty on Amazon. 34. Mahashweta Devi and Naiyer Masud on Amazon. 35. The former homes of Hurree Babu and Putu the Cat. 36. The Life and Times of Abhinandan Sekhri -- Episode 254 of The Seen and the Unseen. 37. Om Namah Volume -- Amit Varma. 38. Salman's Sea of Stories -- Salman Rushdie's Substack newsletter. 39. What Is It Like to Be a Bat? — Thomas Nagel. 40. The Hidden Life of Trees -- Peter Wohlleben. 41. An Immense World -- Ed Yong. 42. The Twitter thread by Sergej Sumlenny that Nilanjana mentioned. 43. The Inheritance of Loss -- Kiran Desai. 44. The Grapes of Wrath -- John Steinbeck. 45. Pather Panchali --  Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. 46. Gora -- Rabindranath Tagore. 47. William Shakespeare, Kalidasa, Geoffrey Chaucer and Krishna Sobti on Amazon. 48. The Cult of Authenticity -- Vikram Chandra. 49. Meenakshi Mukherjee: The Death of a Critic -- Nilanjana Roy. 50. Field Notes from a Waterborne Land: Bengal Beyond the Bhadralok -- Parimal Bhattacharya. 51. Patriots, Poets and Prisoners: Selections from Ramananda Chatterjee's The Modern Review, 1907-1947 -- Edited by Anikendra Sen, Devangshu Datta and Nilanjana Rao. 52. The City Inside -- Samit Basu. 53. Understanding India Through Its Languages -- Episode 232 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Peggy Mohan). 54. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through Its Languages — Peggy Mohan. 55. The Life and Times of Mrinal Pande -- Episode 263 of The Seen and the Unseen. 56. Manjula Padmanathan on Amazon. 57. The Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy. 58. If No One Ever Marries Me -- Lawrence Alma-Tadema. 59. If No One Ever Marries Me -- Natalie Merchant. 60. Kavitha Rao and Our Lady Doctors -- Episode 235 of The Seen and the Unseen. 61. Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India's First Women in Medicine — Kavitha Rao. 62. The Memoirs of Dr Haimabati Sen — Haimabati Sen (translated by Tapan Raychoudhuri). 63. Women at Work — Episode 132 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Namita Bhandare). 64. The Loneliness of the Indian Woman -- Episode 259 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shrayana Bhattacharya). 65. Films, Feminism, Paromita — Episode 155 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Paromita Vohra). 66. The Kavita Krishnan Files — Episode 228 of The Seen and the Unseen. 67. Manjima Bhattacharjya: The Making of a Feminist -- Episode 280 of The Seen and the Unseen. 68. I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Dĕd -- Translated by Ranjit Hoskote. 69. Lal Ded's poem on wrestling with a tiger. 70. Anarchy is a likelier future for the west than tyranny -- Janan Ganesh. 71. The Better Angels of Our Nature -- Steven Pinker. 72. The Ferment of Our Founders -- Episode 272 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Kapila). 73. Rukmini Sees India's Multitudes — Episode 261 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rukmini S). 74. A Life in Indian Politics -- Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jayaprakash Narayan). 75. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism — Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 76. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India — Akshaya Mukul. 77. Manohar Malgonkar, Mulk Raj Anand and Kamala Das on Amazon. 78. Kanthapura -- Raja Rao. 79. India's Greatest Civil Servant -- Episode 167 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Narayani Basu, on VP Menon). 80. Private Truths, Public Lies — Timur Kuran. 81. Alice Munro on Amazon. 82. The Bear Came Over the Mountain -- Amit Varma's favourite Alice Munro story. 83. The Median Voter Theorem. 84. The Ice Cream Vendors. 85. Mohammad Zubair's Twitter thread on the Dharam Sansad. 86. The Will to Change -- Bell Hooks. 87. Paul Holdengraber, Maria Popova, Rana Safvi and Rabih Alameddine on Twitter. 88. The hounding of author Kate Clanchy has been a witch-hunt without mercy -- Sonia Sodha. 89. Democrats have stopped listening to America's voters -- Edward Luce. 90. From Cairo to Delhi With Max Rodenbeck -- Episode 281 of The Seen and the Unseen. 91. The Indianness of Indian Food — Episode 95 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vikram Doctor). 92. GN Devy. 93. The Art of Translation -- Episode 168 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Arunava Sinha). 94. Alipura -- Gyan Chaturvedi (translated by Salil Yusufji). 95. Tomb of Sand -- Geetanjali Shree (translated by Daisy Rockwell). 96. Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya -- Akshaya Mukul. 97. Ashapurna Devi, Agyeya, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chugtai, Qurratulain Hyder, Amrita Pritam and Girish Karnad on Amazon. 98. The Adventures of Dennis -- Viktor Dragunsky. 99. Toni Morrison on Amazon. 100. Haroun and the Sea of Stories -- Salman Rushdie. 101. The Penguin Book Of Indian Poets -- Edited by Jeet Thayil. 102. These My Words: The Penguin Book of Indian Poetry -- Edited by Eunice de Souza and Melanie Silgardo. 103. The Autobiography of a Goddess -- Andal (translated by Priya Sarrukai Chabria and Ravi Shankar). 104. Ghachar Ghochar — Vivek Shanbhag (translated by Srinath Perur). 105. Amit Varma talks about Ghachar Ghochar in episode 13 of The Book Club on Storytel. 106. River of Fire -- Qurratulain Hyder. 107. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas -- Ursula K Le Guin. 108. The Left Hand of Darkness -- Ursula K Le Guin. 109. Mother of 1084 -- Mahashweta Devi. 110. Jejuri -- Arun Kolatkar. 111. The Collected Essays of AK Ramanujan -- Edited by Vinay Dharwadker. 112. The Collected Poems of AK Ramanujan. 113. Folktales From India -- Edited by AK Ramanujan. 114. The Interior Landscape: Classical Tamil Love Poems -- Edited and translated by AK Ramanujan. 115. The Essential Kabir -- Translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! The illustration for this episode is by Nishant Jain aka Sneaky Artist. Check out his work on Twitter, Instagram and Substack.

Historians write about the lives of others -- but what about their own journeys? Ramachandra Guha joins Amit Varma in episode 266 of The Seen and the Unseen to reflect on his notion of home, how he got from there to here, and the strange dreams that sometimes come. Also check out: 1. Rebels Against the Raj -- Ramachandra Guha. 2. Savaging the Civilized -- Ramachandra Guha. 3. A Functioning Anarchy?: Essays for Ramachandra Guha -- Nandini Sundar and Srinath Raghavan. 4. Ramachandra Guha on Amazon. 5. A Cricket Tragic Celebrates the Game -- Episode 201 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 6. Taking Stock of Our Republic -- Episode 157 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 7. Understanding Gandhi. Part 1: Mohandas -- Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 8. Understanding Gandhi. Part 2: Mahatma -- Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 9. Amitava Kumar Finds the Breath of Life -- Episode 265 of The Seen and the Unseen. 10. Aadha Gaon -- Rahi Masoom Raza. 11. Jamuna Kinare Mera Gaon -- Kumar Gandharva. 12. What Have We Done With Our Independence? -- Episode 186 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pratap Bhanu Mehta). 13. A Fish in the Water -- Mario Vargas Llosa. 14. Subaltern and Bhadralok Studies -- Ramachandra Guha. 15. MN Srinivas on Amazon. 16. Manu Pillai on Amazon. 17. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen with Manu Pillai: 1, 2, 3, 4. 18. Sanjay Subrahmanyam on Amazon. 19. The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World -- Linda Colley. 20. Linda Colley on Amazon. 21. Upinder Singh and Nayanjot Lahiri on Amazon. 22. Sturgeon's Law. 23. David Gilmour on Amazon. 24. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin -- Charles Darwin. 25. Of Gifted Voice: The Life and Art of MS Subbulakshmi -- Keshav Desiraju. 26. Finding The Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music -- Amit Chaudhuri. 27. Symphony No.3, Op.36 — Henryk Gorecki. 28. Mallikarjun Mansur, Bhimsen Joshi, Kumar Gandharva, Kishori Amonkar, Basavraj Rajguru, Sharafat Hussain Khan, DV Paluskar, Faiyaz Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, Ravi Shankar, Nikhil Banerjee, Bismillah Khan, Vilayat Khan, Buddhadev Das Gupta, Arvind Parikh, Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande, Veena Sahasrabuddhe, Rashid Khan, Venkatesh Kumar and Priya Purushothaman on YouTube. 29. Raju Asokan and Subrata Chowdhury on YouTube. 30. Veena Doreswamy Iyengar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan in Jugalbandi, 1962-62. 31. Hamsadhvani -- Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, 1950s in Bangalore. 32. Dhano Dhanne -- Jaya Varma and the Chandigarh Choir. 33. The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do -- Judith Rich Harris. 34. The Intellectual Foundations of Hindutva -- Episode 115 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aakar Patel). 35. In Absentia: Where are India's conservative intellectuals? -- Ramachandra Guha. 36. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism -- Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 37. Religion and Ideology in Indian Society -- Episode 124 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Suyash Rai). 38. Political Ideology in India -- Episode 131 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rahul Verma). 39. Sara Rai Inhales Literature -- Episode 255 of The Seen and the Unseen. 40. The Chipko Movement -- Shekhar Pathak. 41. DR Nagaraj, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Sujit Mukherjee, Tridip Suhrud, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Girish Karnad and Mahasweta Devi on Amazon. 42. Marxvaad aur Ram Rajya -- Karpatri Maharaj. 43. The Rise and Fall of the Bilingual Intellectual -- Ramachandra Guha. 44. Yuganta -- Irawati Karve. 45. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra on Amazon. 46. Reconcling the Nagas -- Ramachandra Guha. 47. The State of Our Farmers -- Episode 86 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Gunvant Patil). 48. KT Achaya on Amazon. 49. Shiv Visvanathan on Amazon. 50. Manthan -- Shyam Benegal. 51. Science as a Vocation -- Max Weber. 52. AA Thomson on Wikipedia. 53. Ernest Hemingway, W Somerset Maugham, Penelope Fitzgerald, Barbara Pym and Leo Tolstoy on Amazon. 54. The Kingdom of God Is Within You -- Leo Tolstoy. 55. Anna Karenina -- Leo Tolstoy. 56. War and Peace -- Leo Tolstoy. 57. Father Sergius -- Leo Tolstoy (translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude). 58. Middlemarch -- George Eliot. 59. Limonov -- Emmanuel Carrère. 60. The Netanyahus -- Joshua Cohen. 61. The Gate of Angels -- Penelope Fitzgerald. 62. The Knox Brothers -- Penelope Fitzgerald. 63. Nicholas Boyle on Amazon. 64. Gandhi's Formative Years -- Ramachandra Guha's essay that mentions Boyle's Laws of Biography. 65. Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography -- Sarvepalli Gopal. 66. The Wire -- David Simon etc. 67. The Second Coming -- William Butler Yeats. 68. Ramachandra Guha interviewed by Madhu Trehan. 69. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India -- Akshaya Mukul. 70. Granville Austin on Amazon. 71. The Citizenship Battles -- Episode 152 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Srinath Raghavan). 72. The Multiple Tragedies of the Kashmiri Pandit -- Ramachandra Guha. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free!

In India, we inhabit many worlds, and we live in many languages, many literatures. Sara Rai joins Amit Varma in episode 255 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about her rich life learning to write, learning to read, learning to live. Also check out: 1. Sara Rai on Amazon. 2. “You will be the Katherine Mansfield of Hindi” -- Sara Rai's essay in Caravan. 3. Other Skies -- Sara Rai. 4. Wilderness -- Sara Rai. 5. Premchand's Kazaki And Other Marvellous Tales -- Munshi Premchand (translated and with an introduction by Sara Rai). 6. The City -- CP Cavafy. 7. Memories and Things -- Episode 195 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aanchal Malhotra). 8. The World of Premchand: Selected Short Stories -- Munshi Premchand (translated and with an introduction by David Rubin). 9. Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions From South Asia -- Sheldon Pollock. 10. Blue Is Like Blue -- Vinod Kumar Shukla (translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and Sara Rai). 11. Vinod Kumar Shukla on Amazon. 12. Collected Stories -- Naiyer Masud. 13. Naiyer Masud on Amazon. 14. Georges Simenon, Charles Dickens and Guy de Maupassant on Amazon. 15. The Aim of Literature -- Munshi Premchand. (Another version.) 16. Testaments Betrayed -- Milan Kundera. 17. Jealousy -- Marcel Proust. 18. The Abyss and Other Stories -- Leonid Andreyev. 19. So Much Water So Close To Home -- Raymond Carver. 20. Short Cuts -- Robert Altman. 21. Limits -- Raymond Carver. (Scroll down on that link to find the poem.) 22. Cathedral -- Raymond Carver. 23. Raymond Carver on Amazon. 24. Jean-Paul Sartre, Anton Chekhov, Franz Kafka and WG Sebald on Amazon. 25. Rings of Saturn -- WG Sebald. 26. Umrao Jaan Ada (English, Urdu, Hindi) -- Mirza Hadi Ruswa. 27. Jyotsna Milan on Amazon. 28. In Absentia: Where are India's conservative intellectuals? -- Ramachandra Guha. 29. Young India -- Episode 83 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Snigdha Poonam). 30. Dreamers: How Indians are Changing the World -- Snigdha Poonam. 31. Meghadutam -- Kalidasa. 32. Humans of New York. 33. Sturgeon's Law on Wikipedia. 34. Random BOOMER Journalist Says WHAT About Paul Simon??? -- Rick Beato's magnificent rant. 35. The Time a Stiff Caught Fire -- Keith Yates. 36. Hindi Nationalism -- Alok Rai. 37. A House Divided: Origin and Development of Hindi/Urdu -- Amrit Rai. 38. The Indianness of Indian Food -- Episode 95 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vikram Doctor). 39. Early Indians -- Episode 112 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tony Joseph). 40. Understanding India Through Its Languages -- Episode 232 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Peggy Mohan). 41. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism -- Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 42. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India -- Akshaya Mukul. 43. East West Street -- Philippe Sands. 44. Group Polarization on Wikipedia. 45. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind -- Gustave le Bon (on crowd psychology). 46. Private Truths, Public Lies -- Timur Kuran. 47. A Life in Indian Politics -- Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w  Jayaprakash Narayan.) 48. Don't think too much of yourself. You're an accident -- Amit Varma. 49. Kavitha Rao and Our Lady Doctors -- Episode 235 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Kavitha Rao). 50. The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy -- Michael McCarthy. 51. H is for Hawk -- Helen Macdonald. 52. The Genius of Birds -- Jennifer Ackerman. 53. Nirmal Verma and Ismat Chugtai on Amazon. 54. The Hidden Life of Trees -- Peter Wohlleben. This episode is sponsored by Intel. This episode is co-sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader, FutureStack and The Social Capital Compound. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Please subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! And check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing.

The problem with the past is that it's over. How can we enter distant history and understand what happened? Language is one way. Peggy Mohan joins Amit Varma in episode 232 of The Seen and the Unseen to share her insights on what the evolution of our languages reveals about how we got here.  Also check out: 1. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through Its Languages -- Peggy Mohan. 2. Peggy Mohan's books on Amazon. 3. Amit Varma's Twitter thread on episodes of The Seen and the Unseen about India. 4. Early Indians -- Episode 112 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tony Joseph). 5. India = Migration -- Episode 128 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Chinmay Tumbe). 6. The Art of Translation -- Episode 168 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Arunava Sinha). 7. The Indianness of Indian Food -- Episode 95 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vikram Doctor). 8. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Spanish) (English) -- Gabriel García Márquez. 9. Songs of Kabir -- Translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. 10. Essential Kabir -- Translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. 11. I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Dĕd -- Translated by Ranjit Hoskote. 12. On Language -- Noam Chomsky. 13. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language -- Steven Pinker. 14. The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor -- Translated by WM Thackston Jr. 15. Guns, Germs and Steel: Jared Diamond. 16. Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism -- Niles Eldredge & Steven Jay Gould. (Also, criticism of it.) 17. Genesis of Ṛgvedic Retroflexion -- Madhav Deshpande. 18. Linguistics, Style and Writing in the 21st Century -- A talk by Steven Pinker. 19. Hindi Nationalism -- Alok Rai. 20. A House Divided: Origin and Development of Hindi/Hindavi -- Amrit Rai. 21. Hindustani Musalmaan - Hussain Haidry. 22. Hum Kagaz Nahin Dikhayenge -- Varun Grover. 23. The Emperor of All Maladies -- Siddhartha Mukherjee. 24. The Song of the Dodo -- David Quammen. 25. The Tangled Tree -- David Quammen. 26. Spillover -- David Quammen. 27. Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib on Amazon. This episode is sponsored by Wondrium. Check out their series, The Story of Human Language. For free unlimited access for 14 days, click here. Please subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! And check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing.

Five dohas of Kabir explained (Importance of guru, dissolving the ego, Masjid and prayers, worshiping stones & infinite virtues of God). Resources: Sunil Khilnani's BBC Podcast on Kabir: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05vy50d Linda Hess of Stanford on Kabir: https://youtu.be/KAG2v9wiyNU Songs of Kabir translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. Available on Amazon. http://www.kabirproject.org/ Amar Chitra Katha on Kabir. Available on Amazon.

So much of our history has been weaponized by politics -- especially the Mughal period. Manimugdha Sharma joins Amit Varma in episode 173 of The Seen and the Unseen to shed light on the tug of war around Emperor Akbar -- and why that history remains relevant even today.   Also check out: 1. Allahu Akbar: Understanding the Great Mughal in Today's India -- Manimugdha Sharma. 2. Parthian Shot -- Manimugdha Sharma's column archives. 3. Manimugdha Sharma's reporting in Times of India. 4. Who Broke Our Republic? -- Episode 163 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Kapil Komireddi). 5. The Ideas of Our Constitution -- Episode 164 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Madhav Khosla), 6. The Many Cities of Delhi -- Episode 172 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rana Safvi). 7. Women in Indian History -- Episode 144 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ira Mukhoty). 8. Jahangir the Curious -- Episode 147 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Parvati Sharma). 9. Our Colorful Past -- Episode 127 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Manu Pillai). 10. The BJP's Magic Formula -- Episode 45 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Prashant Jha). 11. Essential Kabir -- Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. 12. White Mughals -- William Dalrymple. 13. Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jehan -- Ruby Lal. 14. The Bhagvad Gita in Urdu, recited by Ahmed Rashid Shervani at Manthan Samvaad. 15. The Early History of India -- Vincent Smith. 16. The Mughal Empire -- JF Richards. 17. The Agrarian System of Mughal India -- Irfan Habib. 18. Akbar and His India -- Irfan Habib. 19. The Western Way of War -- Victor Davis Hanson. 20. The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India -- Randolph GS Cooper. 21. Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India -- Iqtidar Alam Khan. 22. The Millennial Sovereign -- A Azfar Moin. 23. The German Way of War -- Robert Citino 24. When Titans Clashed -- David M Glantz & Jonathan M House.

From 'The Absent Traveller: Prakrit love poetry from the Gathasaptasati of Satavahana Hala'. Selected and translated from the Prakrit by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra.A Poem A Day by Sudhanva Deshpande.Read on April 19, 2020.Art by Virkein Dhar.

Three major Indian poets discuss the poetic imagination, searching its sources, inspirations and philosophy. Eminent English poet and translator Arvind Krishna Mehrotra speaks of his influences, among which he acknowledges William Carlos Williams and the Beat poets, as well as Kabir. Iconic Hindi poet and critic Ashok Vajpeyi has nurtured and founded many cultural institutions. Much awarded English poet, cultural theorist and curator Ranjit Hoskote is the author of the recent Jonahwhale as well as the acclaimed translation of the Kashmiri poet Lal Ded. In conversation with award-winning British poet and scholar Ruth Padel, they read from and discuss the contexts of their work as well as the wider canvas of poetics and aesthetic theories.

Gandhi's power, portable citizenship and Indian writing. Rana Mitter talks to Ramachandra Guha about his new biography of Gandhi, hears about "portable citizenship from Indrajit Roy and discusses Indian writing and literary tradition with Amit Chaudhuri and Sandeep Parmar. Rana also breaks off from the subcontinent briefly to explore the mysterious disappearance of China's biggest film star, Fan Bingbing with the historian, Julia Lovell. Ramachandra Guha has written Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World, 1915-1948 Amit Chaudhuri's new collection of essays is called The Origins of Dislike: A Geneaology of Writerly Discontent New Generation Thinker Sandeep Parmar is a poet and Professor of English at the University of Liverpool whose books include Reading Mina Loy's Autobiographies: Myth of the Modern Woman. Dr Indrajit Roy lectures at the University of York and is the author of Politics of the Poor in Contemporary India Julia Lovell is the author of The Opium War and will publish a global history of Maoism next year. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is the author of four books of poems, most recently The Transfiguring Places. His Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets (1992) and his An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English (2003) have helped shaped ways of looking at Indian writing. Producer: Zahid Warley

Laetitia Zecchini discusses the cosmopolitanism of several post-independence Indian poets and artists. Indian poets and artists situated in specific spaces, such as Arun Kolatkar, from Bombay, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, from Allahabad or Gulammohammed Sheikh from Baroda fashion a cosmopolitanism that must be envisaged as a context of creation, as a practice of writing, reading, translating and creating, and as a project. This project is inseparable from a poetics of 'reworlding' or defamiliarization, from the experience and defense of plurality, and from the 'resilient and inventive strategies for survival' Clifford associates with the notion of discrepant cosmopolitanism.

Today's subject is the low-caste weaver and poet who dared to upturn the social orthodoxies of 15th century India - and who still challenges us today. Sunil explores the life and poetic legacy of Kabir - a dissenter, a provoker and an abrasive debunker of humbug. There are plenty of legends around the poet - for example that, after his death, his body transfigured into flowers so that he could be neither cremated by his Hindu followers s nor buried by Muslim devotees - but we actually know very little about Kabir's life. One of the few certain facts is that he lived in India's most sacred city, Varanasi. Sunil Khilnani finds himself in the poor neighbourhood of Bajardhia where low-caste Muslims still work today as weavers. Sitting in cramped rooms among men with little work, Sunil reflects on the man who described himself as 'a patient weaver's son' but who is actually one of the most impatient, acerbic, fed-up voices in the Indian cultural canon. Kabir has become venerated across northern India as a saint, almost a god. Yet Sunil finds Kabir's name being invoked in secular circles too, for example the annual Jaipur Literary Festival, a 21st century haven for independent thinking. Here he meets the eminent poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, translator of Kabir's poems into modern idiom and an advocate for the poetic dissenter who wasn't afraid to offend the powerful. Producer: Jeremy Grange Original music composed by Talvin Singh.

Dr. Birgit Kaiser (Utrecht), Prof. Peter McDonald (English), and Prof. Elleke Boehmer (English) Here are the examples which Peter McDonald is referring to in the recording: J. Hillis Miller, ‘The University of Dissensus’, Oxford Literary Review, 17:1-2 (1995), pp.-126-27 Xu Bing, ‘Nursery Rhymes 5’, 1994 Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, The Absent Traveller (1991/2008), p. 4 Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Songs of Kabir (2011), pp. 78-9 James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939), p. 203 Alison Flood and Richard Adams, ‘American accent is removed from GCSE syllabus as British literature gets a leg-up’, The Guardian, 30 May 2014, p. 3

Peter D. McDonald talks to Arvind Krishna Mehrotra about his work as a poet, critic and translator, focusing on the idea of triangulation and his interest in the intersections between languages and literary traditions.