Professor Hamilton's Passage to India - Hardcover

Manisha Roy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8190826026 ISBN 13: 9788190826020

Publisher: Yapanchitra Books, 2009

Synopsis

This novel describes the unpredictable turn of events in the life of an American medical researcher in India and how he has no choice but to surrender to these experiences and their consequences. Charles Hamilton, M.D., professor of infectious diseases, receives a substantial grant to spend a year in India gathering data on parasitic diseases in order to better understand their epidemiology. The year is 1975. His explorations take him to a world of problems and challenges, at the same time wonders and surprises far beyond his medical research. He is rejected by the Indian woman that he finds irresistible, by colleagues that he wants to help, and by his wife, who divorces him. In the process Charles also encounters people and events that teach him something new about life, changing him ever so subtly. Charles Hamilton learns to accept a life that is not just based on recognition and fame and is beyond his control. This is a fresh and unique variation to the observations of E.M. Forster in his A Passage to India, by introducing an American doctor into the Indian society of the 1970's. His experiences with rural and urban India range from hilarious to touching pathos. The unexpected emotional, cultural and political conflicts in his quest turn into a crucible leading to a transformation that is subtle yet moving.

About this title

About the Author:

Manisha Roy was born in a Bengali family in Digboi, a small oil town in the northeastern border of India close to Tibet and Myanmar. Her childhood and early youth were spent in this place which was located in the lap of wild and lush nature dominated by powerful rivers of the Himalayan foothills. At age 15 she went to Calcutta, one of the largest cities of the world for college education and six years later, after her first Master's degree in Geography she moved to the US for higher studies and received her second Master's from the University of Rochester, N.Y. in Social Anthropology and in 1972 a doctorate in Psychological Anthropology from the University of California, San Diego. She taught at the universities of Chicago, Colorado and finally Zurich, where she also began studies and training at the C.G. Jung Institute. In 1982 she received her diploma in Analytical Psychology and eventually began a practice in Jungian analysis in Cambridge, Massachusetts and became a core faculty at the C.G. Jung Institute of Boston since 1985. She has taught also at the Jung Institute of Zurich and at the Institutet-Analytisk Psykologi, Stockholm, Sweden. Manisha Roy has published extensively including the books,Bengali Women (1976,93); Cast the First Stone: Ethics in Analytic Practice (co-ed,1995); The Reckoning Heart: An Anthropologist looks at her Worlds(2001), and recently, her first work of fiction, Professor Hamilton's Passage to India(2009) and over 25 articles in both fields. She has also published a collection of short stories and a memoir in her mother tongue Bengali. Apart from analytic practice, teaching and writing, Dr. Roy is also interested in traveling, painting (watercolor) and cooking. She lives in Cambridge, USA with her husband Carl von Essen, a retired physician and author of several books.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yapanchitra Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 8190826026
• ISBN 13: 9788190826020
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 265