The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian

The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is an autobiographical work of one of the most controversial writers of India -- Nirad C. Chaudhuri, the last imperialist. He wrote this when he was around fifty and records his life from his birth at 1897 in Kishorganj, a small town in present Bangladesh. The book relates his mental and intellectual development, his life and growth at Calcutta, his observations of Vanishing Landmarks, the connotation of this is dual -- changing Indian situation and historical forces that was making exit of British from India an imminent affair.

Related Topics:
India - Nirad C. Chaudhuri - Bangladesh - Calcutta

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Nirad, a self-professed Anglophile, is in any situation an explosive proposition and in the book he is at his best in observing as well as observing-at-a-distance and this dual perspective makes it a wonderful reading. His treatment of his childhood, his enchantment, disillusionment and gratitude to the colonial capital Calcutta is highly factual as well as artistic to the extent highly readable.

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Arguably, his magnum opus considering his literary output that he could generate as late age as ninety years, Autobiography is not a single book, it is many. Consciously or unconsciously he has left traces of all his erudition, his spirit and learning. Declaring himself a cartographer of learning, the book is also a cartographic evidence of the author's mind and its varied geographies, of the map as well as of the mind.

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