Ranjit Hoskote

New and Selected Poems, 1985-2005

Vanishing Acts

Ilija Trojanow

Forgotten Histories from East and West

Confluences

What affirms our humanity, enduring beyond our barbarism? Where is home, in a world beleaguered by climate crisis, pandemic and genocide? Hunchprose is Ranjit Hoskote's fierce, poignant testament to these urgencies. The title of this dazzling new collection asserts poetry's claim to be heard above the buzz of data, to transform language, broken by history, into music. Vibrant with linguistic experiment, Hunchprose weaves unpredictable patterns, celebrates our plural selves. In the erasure of ancient scripts, the melting Arctic ice, a lion tamer's primal fear, we recognize vulnerability and rupture. A dancer's courage, a leather worker's revolutionary promise, a locksmith's passion for ruins inspire us to redeem ourselves through love, doubt, hope and dream. Infused with wry humour, informed by the wisdom traditions, Hunchprose urges us to look at our world, and within ourselves, with renewed ardour.

Hunchprose

Jehangir Sabavala

The Art of Jehangir Sabavala

The Crucible of Painting

Bestseller-Autor Ilija Trojanow und der indische Dichter und Kulturkritiker Ranjit Hoskote haben mit ›Kampfabsage: Kulturen bekämpfen sich nicht - sie fließen zusammen‹ eine radikale Streitschrift gegen neue Feindbilder verfasst. Sie wollten damit einst Samuel Huntigtons These vom »Kampf der Kulturen« eine Antwort geben, doch das Thema ist aktueller denn je. Abgrenzung durch die Definition der eigenen kulturellen Identität hat leider wieder Konjunktur. So werden weltweit neue Feindbilder geschaffen und Konflikte geschürt. Die Autoren entlarven die Unsinnigkeit dieser Haltung und rücken den Propheten eines kulturellen Weltkriegs die Köpfe zurecht. Sie zeigen, dass das Zusammenfließen von Kulturen kulturelle Identität und Zivilisation überhaupt erst möglich macht. Ein ermutigender Appell an unsere Vernunft. Trojanow und Hoskote haben das erstmals 2007 erschienene Buch aktualisiert und ergänzt; Pankaj Mishra hat ein Nachwort zu der Neuausgabe verfasst. »Das einzig Ewige ist die Veränderung, sagt ein altes Sprichwort. Wenn die westliche Welt sich abschotten will, so glaubt sie also an das Ende der Geschichte. Sie glaubt, dass ihr System das beste und letzte ist, dass die westliche Kultur abgeschlossen und fertig ist. Sie ist dem Tod geweiht.« Ilija Trojanow

Kulturen bekämpfen sich nicht – sie fließen zusammen

Kampfabsage

Marcella Nesom Sirhandi

Jeffrey Wechsler

Mohan Samant (19242004), among the earliest of the post-Independence modern Indian artists to train in India and settle as a successful mature artist in the West, has been called one of the few artists who has successfully made the bridge between Eastern and Western traditions. Born in Mumbai, India, Samant received his diploma from the Sir JJ School of Art in 1952. That year he joined the Progressive Artists Group. Extended periods abroad195758 in Rome and travel in Europe and Egypt, 195964 in New York Citypreceded his leaving permanently for New York in 1968, where he lived until his death in 2004. This volume, the definitive work on the artist, presents a comprehensive overview of Samants life and work, and includes essays on his place in the development of modernism in post-Independence India, a chronological survey of the styles, techniques, and themes employed by the artist and analyses of the media and techniques he utilized.

Painting

Mohan Samant

Barbara Bertieri

Mohan Samant (1924-2004), among the earliest of the post-Independence modern Indian artists to train in India and settle as a successful mature artist in the West, has been called "one of the few artists who has successfully made the bridge between Eastern and Western traditions". This volume presents an overview of Samants life and work, with essays on his place in the development of modernism in post-Independence India, a chronological survey of the styles, techniques and themes employed by the artist, and analyses of the media and techniques he utilised. SPECIAL PRE-PUBLICATION PRICE £80.00! On publication, this boxed set will be £99.00.

Mohan Samant: Paintings

Harsha V. Dehejia

Prem Shankar Jha

Dehejia has tried to create a place within the main frame of culture and philosophy of Indian art for a legitimate analytic theory called despair. Dehejia's effort creates a space for the modern within Indian classicism by negotiating the philosophy of despair in classical terms. As a result the basic schism that has grown in recent years between the philosophy and history of modern art on the one hand and the philosophy and history of traditional arts is today cloder to being breached.

Reflections from Modern Indian Painting

Despair and Modernity

Sumedh Rajendran

Manoj Nair

Album of art works by a sculptor from India.

Final Call

Sudhir Patwardhan

Works of modern painter with special reference to the depiction of Bombay, India in them; covers the period, 1975-2004; includes introduction.

Sudhir Patwardhan, the Complicit Observer

Jonahwhale, in three beautiful movements, takes on very current themes in its playful, mostly aquatic scope, moving from the ocean to the river Ganges to Marine Drive itself. It raises the narratives of Biblical eight century prophet Jonah, who escapes death by spending three nights in the belly of a whale, and the more recent Moby Dick, whose obsessive Captain Ahab chases the eponymous whale who bit off his leg; even as it resurrects the diverse figures who ran ships along the global trade routes of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the themes of the city at war with itself, among many other concerns. The whale is different things at different moments, in this work, as is the ocean. For, ultimately, Moby Dick is about perception and understanding or not understanding, and the whale is that which we all struggle to pierce; it is also, perhaps, that which swallows us whole and lets us live, sometimes ignorant of what it signifies. Are we within the whale, or without it? Does it always matter? For, in 'A Constantly Unfinished Instrument', Ranjit Hoskote tells us, 'Stay the course until you've caught / the quick, true surge of the ocean / that's felt the fire harpoon pierce its hide:'-here, the ocean itself is the whale. At the heart of the broad, wide-ranging canvas Hoskote puts into play is the idea of synthesis, which he raises in this poem and which generates and regenerates life, in any case. 'If only I'd harpooned this monster on a page,' he teases us, in 'Ahab'; this is exactly what he is attempting to do, and often does. Jonahwhale is remarkably cosmopolitan in its reach; one poem ('As It Emptieth It Selfe') is inspired by the note to the copper engraving of a map of Bengal and parts of Odisha and Bihar prepared by official hydrographers to the East India Company. Another, 'Lascar' adapts a bit of a Sherlock Holmes story, set in 'Bombay-Liverpool-London, 1889', and calling up the wonderful spectre of a sea-cobra the narrator is sailing, with its 'phana' or hood. A sophisticated project in anamnesia, Jonahwhale retrieves fragments and episodes from the multiple pasts that we inherit; it makes an inquiry into the unregarded legacies of the colonial encounter at sea rather than on land. Ambitious, accessible and rejoicing in the language and beauty of the many stunning connections it makes, this new book establishes Hoskote as one of our most gifted contemporary poets.

Jonahwhale

Iranna GR was born in 1970, and has painted professionally for 10 years. His art is thought to be a stylistic challenge to post-modernism, using instead the representative, idealistic and modernist language of contemporary Indian painting. He has won several awards, held a series of one-man shows and participated in exhibitions in Amsterdam and Chicago. The Dancer on the Horse: Reflections on the Art of Iranna GR is a meditation on the life and work of the artist. Ranjit Hoskote emphasizes the spirituality of the artist's work and the importance of his Guru. Frequently, Iranna depicts a solitary figure in an unreal landscape, and this has been interpreted by the author as a self-portrait of one who feels estranged from his context. 'The Dancer on the Horse' refers to a self-portrait by this name. The dancer must maintain both his own logical plan and take into account the movement of the horse which is unpredictable. This balancing act is a metaphor for the artist's obligation to find the appropriate relationship between the inner and outer realities and the private space of the studio and the public space of the gallery. For Ranjit Hoskote, Iranna is immensely successful in achieving this equilibrium.

Reflections on the Art of Iranna GR

The Dancer on the Horse

G. R. Iranna

Iranna G.R. S Art Is Thought To Be A Stylistic Challenge To Postmodernism, Using Instead The Representative, Idealistic And Modernist Language Of Contemporary Indian Painting. This Book Is A Meditation On The Life And Work Of The Artist, Emphasizing The S

Vanishing Acts by Ranjit Hoskoté, winner of the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award 2004, brings together some of his best poetry, drawn from his three published collections, along with a substantial body of new poems. While continuing to explore the interplay between the epic, devastating sweep of historical events and an intimate, often vulnerable, self, his new poems dwell on emigrants, fugitives, interpreters, double agents—survivors who walk the fragile border between eternity and transience. Experimenting with a variety of forms—ranging from the canticle to the cycle, the adapted sonnet to the passionate apostrophe—Hoskoté expresses the anxieties and delights of a transitive self that constantly shifts location, and evokes strikingly the worlds that can open up at the edges of memory, identity and language.

Ranjit Hoskote

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