A Ved Mehta Reader: The Craft of the Essay

Unsurpassed as a prose stylist Ved Mehta is an acknowledged master of the essay form. In this book--the first special collection of Mehta s outstanding writings--the distinguished author demonstrates a wide range of possibilities available to the narrative and descriptive writer today. Addressing subjects that range from religion to politics and on to education and writing with eloquence and high style Mehta here offers a sampling of his works.

Mehta provides a splendid insightful introduction on the craft of the essay meditating on the long history and diverse purposes of the form and on the struggle of learning to write in it himself. In the eight reportorial autobiographical and reflective essays that follow--each a self-contained examination of cultural intellectual or personal themes--he writes on his experience of becoming an American citizen; on Christian theology with a focus on Dietrich Bonhoeffer; on Calcutta and the poorest of the Indian poor; on the disastrous fates of three of Mehta s brilliant Oxford contemporaries; and on a variety of other subjects.

Ved Mehta is currently a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford. He was a staff writer on The New Yorker from 1961 to 1994 and has taught literature and history at half a dozen colleges and universities, including Williams, Vassar, and Yale. He is the author of an autobiographical series of books with the omnibus title Continents of Exile, of which the eighth book, Remembering Mr. Shawn`s New Yorker, has just been published. Among his other books are Portrait of India, Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles, and Rajiv Gandhi and Rama`s Kingdom, all obtainable from Yale University Press.