A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb ISBN: 9780822391357 Platform/Publisher: e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection / Duke University Press Digital rights:Users: unlimited; Printing: unlimited; Download: chapter Subjects: South Asian Studies; Cultural Studies; American Studies;
Kumar's searching and humane account of the global consequences of the U.S. "war on terror" gets behind the rhetoric and state public relations campaigns in a brisk but thoughtful narrative. Kumar covers intellectual and artistic responses to American domestic and foreign security policies, including the work of conceptual artist Hasan Elahi, who after being randomly interrogated by the FBI after 9/11, has taken to documenting and uploading to his Web site every move he makes. In his own reportage, Kumar (Husband of a Fanatic) focuses on two legal cases, in whose details, including his own interviews with the defendants, he astutely deconstructs the logic of what he sees as a burgeoning police state and the global order (or disorder) it encourages. The first is that of Hemant Lakhani, a boastful 70-year-old smalltime London clothier arrested in a sting operation delivering a sample shoulder-fired missile to an FBI informant. The other concerns Shahawar Matin Siraj, drawn into a bomb plot by undercover New York police. An arresting and heartrending work of public protest and valuable social analysis, this work contributes forcefully to a subtle, human-scaled accounting of 21st-century geopolitics. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Amitava Kumar is a novelist, poet, journalist, and Professor of English at Vassar College. He is the author of Husband of a Fanatic , a New York Times "Editors' Choice"; Bombay-London-New York , a New Statesman (UK) "Book of the Year"; and Passport Photos . He is the editor of several books, including Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate , The Humour and the Pity: Essays on V.S. Naipaul , and World Bank Literature . He is also an editor of the online journal Politics and Culture and the screenwriter and narrator of the prize-winning documentary film Pure Chutney . Kumar's writing has appeared in the Nation , Harper's , Vanity Fair , American Prospect , the Chronicle of Higher Education , the Hindu , and other publications in North America and India.
