Aatish Taseer as he appears on http://www.mcclelland.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780771084256#bio
There is something deeply satisfying about shallow judgments. So read this post in that spirit. I am just getting familiar with a young journalist turned writer called Aatish Taseer whose debut book “Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey Through Islamic Lands” is drawing considerable attention in India and elsewhere.
What qualifies the 29-year-old Aatish to hold forth on profound questions concerning the intersection between Islam and culture and suchlike is that he is a son of an Indian Sikh mother and a Pakistani Muslim father. That he was estranged from his father in his childhood apparently lends his story the weight so necessary for a writer who chooses to tackle questions of faith and its overarching influence on culture.
Aatish’s mother is a well known Indian journalist called Tavlin Singh who had a short relationship with the Pakistani businessman turned powerful politician Salman Taseer. It was an angry letter from a father he did not know in response to an article by Aatish that triggered the book.
I have not yet read the book but have read some excerpts on its publisher McLelland’s website. Although excerpts are by no means enough to evaluate the entire book, they are enough for me to clearly point out the predominant literary influence. The prose and observations are decidedly Naipaulian. V. S. Naipaul has a very spare yet telling style. I am not surprised that the famously abrasive master has called Aatish’s book “A subtle and poignant work by a young writer to watch.” The book seems like an update of Naipaul’s own celebrated work “Among the Believers.”
“Once the car had driven away, and we were half-naked specks on the marble plaza Hani said, ‘I’ll read and you repeat after me.’ His dark, strong face concentrated on the page and the Arabic words flowed out,” is how ‘A Pilgrim’s Prelude’ begins. This could have been a beginning by Naipaul. I am not sure if what worked in Naipaul so powerfully can necessarily work in Aatish. That’s what I meant by shallow judgment. The 35 pages that I read on this particular chapter convinces me that Aatish has consciously or otherwise internalized Naipaul.
Naipaul himself may have thought he was reading his own book and that is probably why he felt compelled to call it “subtle and poignant.”
I will read the book when I get to it in due course but I find all such self discovery books set against the complex cultural/religious backdrop pointless. That may have something to do with my near biological indifference to faith.
Read excerpts here: http://www.mcclelland.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780771084256#bio