Selected Essays

Essays on everything from the music of Joni Mitchell to the declining quality of Bengali food from one of India’s preeminent writers.

＂I’m an Indian, so of course I write about India. But then, again, I don’t write about India. I’m not interested in writing about India. This means I’m not entirely, or comfortably, a part of the history of the Indian novel in English either. Nor can I be part of a history that’s now been appropriated by literary journalism and publishing houses: of the form of the novel. It’s not that I’m resistant to appropriation. I’m unfit for appropriation. This may be a good place to be in.＂

A brilliant prose stylist and keen innovator of literary form, Amit Chaudhuri is one of the most singular voices in contemporary letters whose essays, like his fiction, defy categorization and display a sensibility uniquely his own. Incompleteness gathers some of Chaudhuri’s best essays and criticism from more than two decades. In these pieces, Chaudhuri writes on everything from Rabindranath Tagore and Joni Mitchell to the troubles with Indian modernity, from the humble yet delicious snack mix chanachur to globalisation’s appropriation of narrative storytelling over poetic incompleteness. Drolly humorous, and filled with unexpected insight, Incompleteness is incontrovertible proof that Chaudhuri is one of our most original and gifted interpreters of the world after globalisation.

Amit Chaudhuri is a novelist, essayist, poet, and musician. He is a professor of creative writing and the director of the Centre for the Creative and the Critical at Ashoka University. His most recent book is Sweet Shop: New and Selected Poems, 1985-2023, published by NYRB Poets.