Incarnations, Sunil Khilnani
Incarnations, Sunil Khilnani
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Incarnations
India in Fifty Lives

Author: Sunil Khilnani

Narrator: Vikas Adam

Unabridged: 16 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/20/2016


Synopsis

For all of India's myths, its sea of stories and moral epics, Indian history remains a curiously unpeopled place. In Incarnations, Sunil Khilnani fills that space, recapturing the human dimension of how the world's largest democracy came to be. His trenchant portraits of emperors, warriors, philosophers, film stars, and corporate titans—some famous, some unjustly forgotten—bring feeling, wry humor, and uncommon insight to dilemmas that extend from ancient times to our own. As he journeys across the country and through its past, Khilnani uncovers more than just history. In rocket launches and ayurvedic call centers, in slum temples and Bollywood studios, in California communes and grimy ports, he examines the continued, and often surprising, relevance of the men and women who have made India—and the world—what it is. We encounter the Buddha, "the first human personality"; the ancient Sanskrit linguist who inspires computer programmers today; the wit and guile of India's Machiavelli; and the medieval poets who mocked rituals and caste. Incarnations is an ideal introduction to India, and a provocative and sophisticated reinterpretation of its history.

About Sunil Khilnani

Sunil Khilnani is the author of the acclaimed and influential The Idea of India. He currently serves as the Avantha Professor and director of the India Institute at King's College London. He was formerly professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has been a visiting professor of politics at Seikei University, Tokyo, and was elected a research fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. He has also held a Leverhulme Fellowship, and has been a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin, and a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Katia

This book attempts to tell the history of India in 50 portraits of its prominent people starting from Buddha and finishing with the stars of Bollywood and the newly rich. This strategy is only partly successful as it is fragmentary by definition and it is difficult to get any coherent historical nar......more

Goodreads review by Colleen

Reading this book felt like being offered brief glimpses (under 10 pages each) into the lives of these important figures drawn from Indian history (from art to business to religion to politics), but without the benefit of knowing anything about the historical/political moment, and needing to discern......more

How do you choose 50 lives to illustrate the evolution of the palimpsest that is India? Khilnani, whose book The Idea of India, remains one of my favourites, attempts this without too much of a heavy hand. These are 50 short biographical sketches - most very obvious (Buddha, Akbar, Gandhi, Ambedkar,......more