The Red Letters
Continents of Exile: 12
Published on 7. January 2021
208 pages
978-0-241-50500-7 (ISBN)
Description
The last volume of Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta.
During the clamour of a New York dinner party, Mehta is startled to find his father crying on his mother's shoulders. This episode begins a painful and revealing voyage into his father's personal history. In stark prose, Mehta unravels a passionate, clandestine affair that bore quiet yet extraordinary consequences for himself and his family. Red Letters also serves as a brilliant exploration and a recreation of British India: its sights and sounds, its injustices and its secrecy.
During the clamour of a New York dinner party, Mehta is startled to find his father crying on his mother's shoulders. This episode begins a painful and revealing voyage into his father's personal history. In stark prose, Mehta unravels a passionate, clandestine affair that bore quiet yet extraordinary consequences for himself and his family. Red Letters also serves as a brilliant exploration and a recreation of British India: its sights and sounds, its injustices and its secrecy.
Reviews / Votes
A story of enough provocative, sensual grace to have fueled Scheherazade for a 1,002nd night * Kirkus Reviews * Well-chosen details represent more than themselves... The trick is to choose the details, which Mehta does with consummate, sly skill -- Michael Wood, in praise of Continents of Exile Intelligent, critically observing ... extraordinary -- Janet Malcolm, in praise of Continents of ExileMore details
Series
Edition
Digital original
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Edition type
Digital original
File size
1,76 MB
ISBN-13
978-0-241-50500-7 (9780241505007)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Ved Mehta is a journalist, novelist, and one of the most prolific memoirists of the twentieth century. Blind since the age of four, Mehta spent his early years in India, before first moving to America, where he studied at Harvard, and then to Britain, where he studied at Oxford. A MacArthur Prize fellow and member of the British Royal Society of Literature, he was a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine for over thirty years. His 27 books include the acclaimed multi-volume memoir Continents of Exile.
