<p>In his early twenties, the novelist Chandrahas Choudhury found himself in the position of most young people who want to write: impractical, hard-up, ill-at-ease in the world. Like most people who love to read, his most radiant hours were inside the pages of a book.</p>.<p>Seeking to combine his love of writing with his love of reading, he became an adept of a trade that is mainly transacted lying down — that is, he became a book reviewer.</p>.<p>My Country Is Literature brings together the best of his literary criticism: a long train of perceptive essays on writers as diverse as V S Naipaul and Orhan Pamuk, Gandhi and Nehru, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and Jhumpa Lahiri. The book also contains an introductory essay describing Choudhury’s book-saturated years as a young writer in Mumbai, the joys and sorrows and stratagems of the book reviewer’s trade, and the ways in which literature is made as much by readers as by writers.</p>.<p>Delightfully punctuated with 15 portraits of writers by the artist Golak Khandual, this is essential reading for everyone who believes that books are the most beautiful things in life.</p>
<p>In his early twenties, the novelist Chandrahas Choudhury found himself in the position of most young people who want to write: impractical, hard-up, ill-at-ease in the world. Like most people who love to read, his most radiant hours were inside the pages of a book.</p>.<p>Seeking to combine his love of writing with his love of reading, he became an adept of a trade that is mainly transacted lying down — that is, he became a book reviewer.</p>.<p>My Country Is Literature brings together the best of his literary criticism: a long train of perceptive essays on writers as diverse as V S Naipaul and Orhan Pamuk, Gandhi and Nehru, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and Jhumpa Lahiri. The book also contains an introductory essay describing Choudhury’s book-saturated years as a young writer in Mumbai, the joys and sorrows and stratagems of the book reviewer’s trade, and the ways in which literature is made as much by readers as by writers.</p>.<p>Delightfully punctuated with 15 portraits of writers by the artist Golak Khandual, this is essential reading for everyone who believes that books are the most beautiful things in life.</p>