Amitava Kumar is the author of several books of fiction and non-fiction. His work has appeared in Granta, the New York Times, Harper's, and several other publications. He has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and is currently a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Library. His novel Immigrant, Montana was on the Best of the Year lists at the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Barack Obama's list of favourite books of 2018. His 2021 novel A Time Outside This Time was described by the New Yorker as a ‘shimmering assault on the Zeitgeist'. The Blue Book: A Writer's Journal, published by HarperCollins in 2022, met with a very positive response from readers and critics alike. My Beloved Life, his latest novel, will be out soon. Kumar is professor of English at Vassar College in upstate New York.
<p style="margin: 6px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 24px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px;">One day passes. Then another. A whole succession of days turning into months and years. How to mark our separate days? The places we have been. Our individual passions, our pain. Against the blurring of years, the clarity of a record. And even amidst crises, how to keep creativity alive?</em></p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 24px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px;">Also, how to stop time?</em></p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 24px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;">After the first wave of Covid had passed, the lockdown was lifted and travel resumed in earnest. Amitava Kumar found himself in London with a group of American students on a study tour-in the midst of the Omicron wave. A year later, he was in India, in his native Motihari among other places. Meanwhile, Russia attacked Ukraine and Rushdie was assaulted with a knife in upstate New York. Amitava kept a journal-to record the times he was living through and how he would like to remember them.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 24px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;">In these pages, through words and drawings, an acclaimed author and artist reveals how a writer observes the world around us-and the world inside us. <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px;">The Yellow Book</em>, like <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px;">The Blue Book</em>, shows us how we can put together not just a journal or a book, but also how we assemble a life; and, in our troubled times, why we must plant memories and continue to believe in spring.</p>
