Husband Of A Fanatic: A Personal Journey Through India, Pakistan, Love, And Hate
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.53 (803 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1565849264 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-01-27 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
That event led to a process of discovery that prompted Kumar to examine the hatreds and intimacies joining Indians and Pakistanis, Hindus and Muslims, fundamentalists and secularists, writers and rioters.In Husband of a Fanatic, Kumar chronicles the entanglements that his new marriage provoked—from ambivalent encounters with family to his disquieting lunch with the amiable bigot who had posted Kumar’s name on his internet blacklist of Hindu traitors. Kumar also travels across the South Asian continent, visiting a classroom in riot-torn Gujarat, a village beside the Ganges, and a psychiatric ward in Kashmir. With a poet’s eye for detail, Kumar draws a map of violence, moving between the wars and nuclear rivalry dividing two nation-states.Employing elegant and spare prose, Husband of a Fanatic is a fiercely personal reflection on the idea of the enemy.. In the summer of 1999, while India and Pakistan were engaged in a war, Amitava Kumar—a Hindu Indian writer living and teaching in the United States—married a Pakistani Muslim woman
Invisible borders between Hindus and Muslims Kelly Qadiani Amitava Kumar is an Indian Hindu literature professor teaching in a college in the East coast of America, in his early forties, and married to a Canadian-Pakistani writer of Muslim heritage. And this brief bio matters as the subtitle of his book makes clear - A personal journey through India, Pakistan, Love and Hate.Kumar revels in sharing his reading and travelling experience organised around the theme of the Hindu-M. "Deceptive Title" according to Kirti. The title of the book is deceptive and am not sure whether it adds any value barring catching the attention of the would be buyer. Or it is a clever play on the word 'fanatic' as the book demonstrates the many facets of fanaticism that he encounters. I found the book to be interesting but it did leave me with an ambivalent feeling as huge chunks of the book are devoted to retelling of stories from other writersI found. "Lacking courage of his convictions" according to S. Kumar. Amitav Kumar's "Husband Of A Fanatic" is well written but I came away feeling pity for the author's lack of spine. Marrying a Pakistani Muslim, he feels he hasn't converted to Islam but has no guts to stand up to his convictions when being forced to change his name to a Muslim one. Despite acknowledging the Official ban on Hindu-Muslim marriage in Pakistan and unbroken legacy of forced conversions, he has the gall to
. A brilliant illustration of Kumar's skills
Amitava Kumar is the author of Passport Photos and Bombay–London–New York. His writing has appeared in The Nation, Harper’s, American Prospect, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Times of India. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.