Amitava Kumar

Amitava Kumar is an Indian writer and journalist who is currently Professor of English at Vassar College.

Early Life and Education

Kumar was born in the city of Arrah in the Indian state of Bihar on March 17, 1963. He grew up close to his birthplace in Patna, also in Bihar. In India, Kumar earned a bachelor's degree in Political Science from Hindu College, Delhi University in 1984. He holds two master's degrees in Linguistics and Literature from Delhi University (1986) and Syracuse University (1988) respectively. In 1993, he received his doctoral degree from the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota.Currently, he lives with his family in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Work

Overview

Kumar is the author of Husband of a Fanatic (The New Press, 2005 and Penguin-India, 2004), Bombay-London-New York (Routledge and Penguin-India, 2002), and Passport Photos (University of California Press and Penguin-India, 2000). He has also written a book of poems, No Tears for the N.R.I. (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1996). The novel Home Products was published in early 2007 by Picador-India, and appeared in the US in August 2009 under the title . Early in 2009, Picador-India published his book ; the book was later published by Duke University Press in August 2010 under the title, . In his review of this book, Dwight Garner at the called it a "perceptive and soulful — if at times academic —...
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