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A Book of Memory (Penguin Viking, February, 2011) An elegant meditation on memory and desire. His memoirs offer a fascinating account of his lifelong search for the wellsprings of Indian identity. Written with rare candour, A Book of Memory grapples with not only crises of identity and intellect, but also the ecstasies and vicissitudes of erotic pleasure and love, painting a sensuously detailed portrait of a life well lived.
German translation: Die Seele der Anderen: Mein Leben zwischen Indien und Westen (Munich: Beck Verlag, in Press)
Malayalam Translation: (Kottayam : DC Books, in Press)
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His superb memoir outlines the making of a modern Indian- how a ruminative and restless mind realized itself in the folds of a vocation of understanding. A Book of Memory somehow makes a gentle read out of Kakar's bruising candour, buoyed by his fluently meditative and occasionally lyrical prose. |
Tehelka |
The prime movers of A Book of Memory are identity, relationships and as a function of these, eroticism, and Kakar frequently uses his psychiatric insights to address the crises of the first, the dimensions of the second and the imperatives of the third....in a series of observations that effectively benchmark our condition.... Kakar has this amazing ability to remember the smallest detail of everything he considers pertinent to his narrative. |
The Telegraph |
One of the delights of Kakar's memoir is his observation of his own feelings... no one has done this better with such finesse as he..... that rare autobiography without a touch of conceit. |
Outlook |
..a big throbbing book about a long eventful life. Essential reading.... |
India Today |
...intimate and very personal portrait of the author's own life, seen through the prism of memory, and filled with a wealth of detail and anecdote. |
Indian Express |
...a memoir whose recollections, dreams, wishes, ideas and thoughts mingle with the recapitulation of a life lived well... an elegant autobiography by a shrink who narrates how memory and mind shape much of our living consciousness. |
Business Standard |
What helps the narrative to become riveting is that the story recounted is not a linear account but one that meanders just as consciousness does ...an unputdownable book. |
The Tribune |
Holds up a lens of understanding onto the impact of culture on Indian psyche. |
Mail Today |
...honest, almost brutally so... and absorbing. |
The Week |
...peppered with the colour and enchantment of the experience of a Southasian upbringing. |
Himal |
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