Provincials

Postcards from the Peripheries

Häftad, Engelska, 2025

AvSumana Roy

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From the acclaimed author of How I Became a Tree, an enchanting and joyous exploration of life and creativity at the geographical edges of the modern world “A striking mix of memoir and literary analysis. . . . Wise and whimsical.”—Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal Who is a provincial? In this subversive book, Sumana Roy assembles a striking cast of writers, artists, filmmakers, cricketers, tourist guides, English teachers, lovers and letter writers, private tutors and secret-keepers whose lives and work provide varied answers to that question. Combining memoir with the literary, sensory, and emotional history of an ignored people, she challenges the metropolitan’s dominance to reclaim the joyous dignity of provincial life, its tics and taunts, enthusiasms and tragicomedies. In a wide-ranging series of “postcards” from the peripheries of India, Europe, America, and the Middle East, Roy brings us deep into the imaginative world of those who have carried their provinciality like a birthmark. Ranging from Rabindranath Tagore to William Shakespeare, John Clare to the Bhakti poets, T. S. Eliot to J. M. Coetzee, V. S. Naipaul to the Brontës, and Kishore Kumar to Annie Ernaux, she celebrates the provincials’ humor and hilarity, playfulness and irony, belatedness and instinct for carefree accidents and freedom. Her unprecedented account of provincial life offers an alternative portrait of our modern world.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2025-07-08
Mått140 x 216 x 27 mm
Vikt372 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor352
FörlagYale University Press
ISBN9780300283365

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“A striking mix of memoir and literary analysis. . . . Provincials is a wise and whimsical exploration of writers and poets from uncool towns and the seemingly stagnant countryside.”—Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal“Roy is clear, wide-ranging, self-aware, and delightful.”—Sameer Pandya, Los Angeles Review of Books“Aided by a remarkable prose that is poetic, analytical and ruminating all at once, Roy interjects her narrative with childhood and adult memories, literary analysis, and life-histories of the provincials, famous and forgotten alike.”—Iman Kumar Mitra, Telegraph India“Moments of astounding clarity and beauty. . . . Roy’s text resonates with honesty and complexity, prompting readers to consider the relationships between location, identity, and memory—whether she is narrating childhood recollections or delving into the nuances of language and pronunciation.”—Swapna Peri, Storizen“Provincials is a playful, innovative, hybrid endeavor. Sumana Roy traverses literary culture and offers us a counter-canonical and vernacular appreciation of people, languages, cultures, traditions, and reading and writing practices.”—R. Radhakrishnan, author of History, the Human, and the World Between“Provincials is a work of enchanting originality and urgent relevance. Combining criticism, autobiography, and poetry, Sumana Roy reclaims provincialism as a cosmopolitanism rooted in the local and shaped by the embodied experience of place and language.”—Yota Batsaki, Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University“Sumana Roy’s wide-ranging intellect and singular style are on full display in this inspired amble through the republic of letters in search of belonging, house and home, and insight into the idea of the provincial. Roy’s inspired sensibility makes this a delightful read!”—Jeff Deutsch, author of In Praise of Good Bookstores