Autobiography, Travel and Postnational Identity Gandhi, Nehru and Iqbal [Hardcover]

This book examines concepts of travel in the autobiographies of leading Indian nationalists in order to show how nationalism is grounded in notions of individual selfhood, and how the writing of autobiography, fused with the genre of the travelogue, played a key role in formulating the complex tie between interiority and nationality in South Asia.Acknowledgements Introduction Native Travelees Nationalism's Travelling Autobiographies and Indian Travelogues Travel and Modernity A Strange and Uncharted Land The Aporia of Muslim Nationalism Gandhi's Vulnerability Gandhi, 'Truth' and Translatability A Reluctant Admission of the Reality of the Self Conclusion Bibliography

'[A] unique and very important book. Its uniqueness derives from the fact that it combines three vital fields, each of great contemporary relevance, but seldom if ever put together. The first is life writing, the second travel writing, the third postcolonial studies. To bring them into one coherent argument is itself a brilliant stroke. Majeed has not only had this singular idea, but he has also carried out convincingly, and with considerable ?lan. Throughout the book is a riveting read. It is fluent as well as being learned, subtle without being unnecessarily abstruse...The postgraduate will find it absorbing, while the advanced undergraduate will discover in it much that is of worth. The researcher will simply revel. Compared to this, all other studies in the field are bicycle rickshaws. This is a Stretch Limousine.' - Dr Robert Fraser, Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, Senior Research Fellow, The Open University.

'This excellent book will register an immediate impact in the fields of literary studies and history, but it will also appeal to a wider range of disciplines that are now concerned with topics such as the person, self-hood and the structure of narrative.' - Professor Christopher Bayly, University of Cambridge

'Javed Majeed has produced an exceptilS+