Prufrock's Page

Friday, November 02, 2007

Superrb

Breaking a self-imposed silence to write about how delighted one is that the New York Review of Books is re-releasing Govindas Vishnoodas Desani's classic All About H. Hatterr, with an introduction by Anthony Burgess in which he writes: "It is the language that makes the book... It is not pure English; it is like Shakespeare, Joyce, and Kipling, gloriously impure." (One's own dog-eared copy, the Penguin Modern Classics edition, acquired from the footpath in Mumbai at a time when they actually sold books on footpaths in that city, is kicking about in some unopened carton, more's the pity.) This informative site will tell you all about the author, and here's the University of Texas at Austin's memorial resolution.