‘After more than fifty years of modernization, India is far from being made over in the image of a western country . . . It often poses hard challenges. The reactions it evokes are complex, ranging from awe and wonder to repulsion and rejection.’

India in Mind is a stunning collection of the diverse and vivid reactions that the subcontinent has evoked in the greatest writers of our time. Its twenty-five pieces range from fiction and non-fiction to poetry, ‘lighting up a thousand forgotten details’ about the last hundred and fifty years of a changing India. They reveal as much about the authors and their times as, with intuition and intelligence, about this cast country and its people.

Edited and introduced by Pankaj Mishra, one of the finest writers today, India in Mind includes all-time favourites as well as lesser-known treasures. J.R. Ackerley attempting to learn Hindi; Allen Ginsberg immersing himself in Benares; V.S. Naipaul searching for the India of his imagination-this brilliant collection is for all those who find India endlessly fascinating, as well as for those who enjoy exquisite writing. All the contributors are individually introduced.