Anita Desai
The Spice of Life
This surprising and delightful autobiography, discovered on a dusty shelf in the library, would have been extraordinary enough for its lively, robust and concrete prose (all qualities rarely found in English written by Indian novelists) but becomes even more so when one discovers it is the work of a Bengali Muslim who left school – the Victoria Memorial High School at Memari, a country town a few miles away from his village in the Burdwan district – at the age of fourteen to start earning his living. He did this in such an indiscriminate variety of ways as to make for a positively Rabelaisian recital which proved, in my case, such irresistible reading that on finishing it I wished for a second volume. Mr Rasul has not only the gift for living fully, an attractive enough feature , but also an unusual gift for infusing his prose with this quality.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Sabotage became so prevalent that bankers even created their own terms – ‘asymmetric information’, ‘lack of financial literacy’, ‘the principal-agent dilemma’ – to describe how they might turn a dime from customers’ gullibility or ignorance.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-criminals-of-the-universe
'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/artists-for-hire
‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2