Books by Chaudhuri in English

Published by Macmillan, London, 1951. This book made him famous abroad and infamous in India. Nothing irked Indians more than the dedication:

To the memory of the British Empire in India, which conferred subjecthood upon us, but withheld citizenship; to which yet every one of us threw out the challenge: ``Civis Britannicus sum'' because all that was good and living within us was made, shaped, and quickened by the same British rule.

But as Khushwant Singh has said, the wogs took the bait and having only read the dedication sent up a howl of protest. We have come around now and concede that this is a masterpiece. Mrs. Soames (Mary neé Churchill) says that Churchill thought it was one of the best books he had read. Some reviews follow.

Chaudhuri's Autobiography may be the one great book to have come out of the Indo-English encounter. No better account of the penetration of the Indian mind by the West---and, by extension, of the penetration of one culture by another---will be or now can be written. V. S. Naipaul

I have loved this book because it evokes so beautifully and so completely the world to which my father belonged---the villages and rice fields of East Bengal, then Dacca and Calcutta---but its importance lies in something beyond that; its almost unique achievement in charting the development of a complex mind made up of its native Bengali and alien European heritage. Anita Desai

What makes it a truly great autobiography is that the author is himself the illustration of his subject, demonstrating in every line how the highest achievements of European culture can be effortlessly absorbed by the Hindu personality without making it any less convoluted, deep, wildly humorous, devious and sublime. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Chaudhuri is the complete writer [and] his Autobiography a glorious book...a perfectly realized product of its time and yet in its scope as timeless as a masterpiece. Zulfikar Ghose

Newer reviews of this book are also available:

• Chaudhuri, Nirad. The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian. (S.S. Moorty), 10.2 (Spring), 173-176,
• A provocative book in the Hindu dated December 7, 1997.

Published in 1959. Of course, Chaudhuri had hoped that Winston Churchill would review his book but E. M. Foster, author of A Passage to India, did so for the London Observer and wrote (as quoted by Natwar Singh):

Besides having integrity and courage, he possesses ethusiasm, cheerfulness and a good English style... I have had the pleasure of meeting him once during his visit. His liveliness and intelligence were striking and he made two remarks that particularly impressed me. The first remark was about an unfamiliar Florentine painter, Domenico Veneziano. He seemed to know all about Domenico Veneziano and I realized how thorough his cultural preparation for Europe must have been and how much he must have read and reflected.

The second was about my novel, A Passage to India. He announced with some firmness that Aziz would never have been admitted into his ancestral home. This does not matter for Aziz, who after all has elsewhere to go, but it made me wonder whether I should have been either.

Published by Chatto & Windus, London, 1987. This is the second volume of Chaudhuri's autobiographical work and covers the years 1921--1952. Some reviews follow.

Anyone who wishes to understand what has happened in India in the twentieth century---politically and culturally---must read Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Among her men of letters, he is unique; for the fertility of his mind and the polymathic range of his interests, as well for the lucidity of his prose and his sheer integrity. Geoffrey Moorhouse

[Chaudhuri] has spent a lifetime kicking against the myths and shibboleths held by the majority of his fellow countryment: he has ridiculed the pacifism of Mahatma Gandhi...he has castigated Indian nationalism for being corrupt, self-seeking, and destructive...[he has] vented his spleen at the stupidity and philistinism of the British in India. His latest [book] is almost a thousand pages long. It testifies to [his] eloquence, wit, and intellectual brilliance that he can go on at such length without once becoming a bore. Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books.

Mr. Chaudhuri's book is an extraordinary fusion of personal experience and national history. The Atlantic

Incidentally, this book was widely reviewed and I will add references to those as soon I get some time.