Provincials: Postcards from the Peripheries

From the acclaimed author of How I Became a Tree, an enchanting and joyous exploration of life and creativity at the geographical edges of the modern world

"A striking mix of memoir and literary analysis. . . . Wise and whimsical."--Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal

Who is a provincial? In this subversive book, Sumana Roy assembles a striking cast of writers, artists, filmmakers, cricketers, tourist guides, English teachers, lovers and letter writers, private tutors and secret-keepers whose lives and work provide varied answers to that question. Combining memoir with the literary, sensory, and emotional history of an ignored people, she challenges the metropolitan's dominance to reclaim the joyous dignity of provincial life, its tics and taunts, enthusiasms and tragicomedies.

In a wide-ranging series of "postcards" from the peripheries of India, Europe, America, and the Middle East, Roy brings us deep into the imaginative world of those who have carried their provinciality like a birthmark. Ranging from Rabindranath Tagore to William Shakespeare, John Clare to the Bhakti poets, T. S. Eliot to J. M. Coetzee, V. S. Naipaul to the Bront?s, and Kishore Kumar to Annie Ernaux, she celebrates the provincials' humor and hilarity, playfulness and irony, belatedness and instinct for carefree accidents and freedom. Her unprecedented account of provincial life offers an alternative portrait of our modern world.

Author: Sumana Roy
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 03/26/2024
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 8.40h x 4.80w x 1.50d
ISBN13: 9780300266139
ISBN10: 0300266138
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Memoirs
- Social Science | Sociology | Rural
- Social Science | Developing & Emerging Countries

About the Author
Sumana Roy is the author of How I Became a Tree, a work of nonfiction; Missing: A Novel; My Mother's Lover and Other Stories; and two poetry collections, Out of Syllabus and V.I.P.: Very Important Plant. She teaches at Ashoka University.