• About

    I write a fortnightly "Letter from India" column for the International Herald Tribune, and occasionally for The New York Times

    I'm working on a non-fiction book about India, to be published by Riverhead in 2010

    I've written for The Atlantic, The Economist, Granta, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and several other publications

  • Highlights

    Two articles on the five-year anniversary of the tsunami (1, 2), from The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. These follow-up from my two original reports on the tsunami, published in The New Yorker (1, 2).

    See also a related article from Granta on coastal erosion in South India.

    Two articles on the social impact of rapid development, from The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times (1, 2).

    I've also written on development for The Atlantic (an essay review on Amartya Sen ) and The Economist (on the digital divide).

    I've written several literary essays and reviews over the years. See this one on VS Naipaul, from Transition, and this one on Indian literature, from The New Statesman.

Wages of Sin

Sunday, August 27th, 2000
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Review of An Obedient Father, by Akhil Sharma, The New York Times Book Review

Inside the Jihad

Thursday, August 10th, 2000
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An interview with Ahmed Rashid, published in Atlantic Unbound

12 Million Strangers

Sunday, April 9th, 2000
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Review of The Blue Bedspread, by Raj Kamal Jha, The New York Times Book Review

Two Indias

Wednesday, March 15th, 2000
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Clinton celebrates India’s high-tech achievements, but is he overlooking the 75 percent of the nation that still lives in the countryside? An op-ed piece from The Boston Globe

Sentimental Education

Sunday, February 27th, 2000
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Review of The Romantics, by Pankaj Mishra, The New York Times Book Review

Only Disconnect

Friday, January 21st, 2000
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The unedited transcript of an interview with VS Naipaul that ran in Harper’s.

Between Father and Son

Tuesday, January 18th, 2000
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Review of Between Father and Son, by V.S. Naipaul, published in Salon.com

Humane Development

Wednesday, December 15th, 1999
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Interview with Amartya Sen at his Cambridge residence, published in Atlantic Unbound

A Third Way for the Third World

Tuesday, December 14th, 1999
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A review of Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen, published in The Atlantic Monthly.
Ultimately, this is the significance of Sen’s synthesis: in pairing the orthodoxy with its critique, in using the language of the establishment to challenge the establishment, Sen has stretched the boundaries of development far wider than development’s critics have themselves managed to do.

The Street

Friday, July 16th, 1999
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An report on street children in Bucharest, published in Transition
The first time I saw them, they were begging outside Gara de Nord, Bucharest’s central train station. I barely noticed: it was my first day in Romania, and the children melded almost indistinguishably into the gloom. Bucharest is an urban nightmare, and the physical horror flattens into a kind of psychological numbness.