Indians writing in English are no longer regarded members of a minority community by authors writing in regional vernacular languages. In fact, Indo-Anglican authors have made a distinct mark in the literary scene globally. These relatively young, widely travelled, urban authors have successfully created their own niche and have also enriched the vast treasure-trove of English literature. Amit Chaudhuri has written four novels, a book of short stories, and edited the Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature. The Clarendon Press, Oxford, recently published his critical study of D.H. Lawrence’s poetry and critical theory. He has been translated into several languages, and has won several prestigious awards including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Encore Prize, the Southern Arts Literature Prize and the Sahitya Akademi Award. Tomorrow Chaudhuri delivers a lecture on Travels in the Subculture of Modernity. Hosted by Seagull Foundation for the Arts, this lecture is a meditation by Chaudhuri on his travels, as a teacher of ‘modern Indian literature’ and, later, as a literary awardee, late last year and early this year, tracing an arc from New York to Delhi. It is concerned with questions of anthologising, representing, and most importantly, reading ‘Indian literature,’ and is also a record of, and reflection on, the competing and substitute forms of modernity he encountered in these various locations.

When: Tomorrow at 6 pm

Where: Seagull Bookstore