This collection of Amit Chaudhuri's writings makes up a book which I would probably have enjoyed more if I hadn't undertaken to review it. The puzzling entries, three or four pages of Indian middle-class life without the vestige of 'story', I wouldn't have bothered to read again - as a critic must read again what baffles him - to discover their purpose, and what Chaudhuri means to convey by mere fragments, and what he means by 'real time'. All these pieces (except the Reminiscence) have, I think, appeared before, but are undated, so it is not possible to trace in them the development of their author's ideas or to find a pattern in the way they are arranged. What every page, every line, of Chaudhuri's writing does achieve is to load into his reader's mind much rich detail of Indian life and of the Indian mentality.
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