The Girl Who Ate Books: Adventures in Reading

A unique collection of essays from one of India's best-loved critics From Bankimchandra Chatterjee to G.V. Desani to Vikram Seth | Indian writing in English has come a long way over the last hundred years. And Nilanjana Roy - voracious eater of books and sharpest of critics - has taken stock of it all. One of India's most widely read journalists | Roy has been writing reviews | columns | essays and features for over two decades. The Girl Who Ate Books revisits the best of these occasional pieces and weaves them together with a set of new personal essays. From early memories of living in a house made of books to encounters with men and women who hoarded books to the author's first taste of the printed word | this is a memoir of reading | loving and living with books like no other. Bringing together writers across generations - from the obscure Sake Dean Mahomet to the mischievous Khushwant Singh to the fiery Arundhati Roy - The Girl Who Ate Books gives us a ringside view of the theatre of Indian writing in English over several decades | and especially the last two. Written in the author's understated but unfailingly elegant style | this is an essential collection for those who live to read and read to live.