About the author
" Amitava Kumar is the author of several books, including A Matter of Rats: A Short
Biography of Patna and The Lovers: A Novel, both published by Aleph. His first novel,
Home Products (2007), was shortlisted for the Crossword Prize, and his non-fiction
report, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb (2010), which the
New York Times described as a ‘perceptive and soulful…meditation on the global war
on terror and its cultural and human repercussions’, was given the Page Turner
Award. Kumar’s writing has appeared in the New Yorker, The Guardian, New York
Times, Caravan, Harper’s and Vanity Fair. His essay ‘Pyre’, first published in Granta,
was selected by Jonathan Franzen for Best American Essays 2016. He was awarded
a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016. Kumar is Professor of English at Vassar College."