Up at Oxford
Continents of Exile: 7
Published on 3. December 2020
208 pages
978-0-241-50495-6 (ISBN)
Description
Book 2 in 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.
After studying in the United States, Mehta - blind since childhood - achieves his dream of enrolling at the University of Oxford: a place that has consumed his imagination ever since he was a small boy growing up under the British Raj. In Up at Oxford, Mehta recalls the nuances of his conversations, the range of his youthful emotions, and the sounds, smells, and tastes of university life. Along the way he draws memorable portraits of, among others, novelists, poets, scholars, and peers.
After studying in the United States, Mehta - blind since childhood - achieves his dream of enrolling at the University of Oxford: a place that has consumed his imagination ever since he was a small boy growing up under the British Raj. In Up at Oxford, Mehta recalls the nuances of his conversations, the range of his youthful emotions, and the sounds, smells, and tastes of university life. Along the way he draws memorable portraits of, among others, novelists, poets, scholars, and peers.
Reviews / Votes
An engaging memoir of life at Oxford University in the 50's, by the prolific Ved Mehta * Kirkus Reviews * His fall into blindness had broken open his perception so that nothing escapes him . . . he has a clarity that is sometimes like clairvoyance -- Peter Ackroyd Well-chosen details represent more than themselves... The trick is to choose the details, which Mehta does with consummate, sly skill -- Michael Wood 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
1,98 MB
ISBN-13
978-0-241-50495-6 (9780241504956)
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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.
