I don’t read celebrity memoirs…unless they are 70 years old, apparently. All I did was laugh at this priceless title on my great aunt’s bookshelf, and she said yeah, it was a pretty good read, and spontaneously gave it to me. Nayantara Sahgal offers an interesting window into the lives of wealthy liberals of s India. They have a funny mix of money, influence, education, liberal ideals, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism. They get married in course, homespun cloth, as Ghandi instructed, but still have plenty of valuables to be hidden from raids by British authorities. They romanticize the folk traditions of their country, for which they would sacrifice everything, but spend much of their lives abroad. I know many people like them (including my great aunt), but modern wealthy U.S. liberals as a group don’t seem to have this absolute willingness to spend years in prison for their ideals. In s India, they did.
I read quite a few books from this time p
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Prison and Chocolate Cake by Nayantara Sahgal
July 1,
I don’t read celebrity memoirs…unless they are 70 years old, apparently. All I did was laugh at this priceless title on my great aunt’s bookshelf, and she said yeah, it was a pretty good read, and spontaneously gave it to me. Nayantara Sahgal offers an interesting window into the lives of wealthy liberals of s India. They have a funny mix of money, influence, education, liberal ideals, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism. They get married in course, homespun cloth, as Ghandi instructed, but still have plenty of valuables to be hidden from raids by British authorities. They romanticize the folk traditions of their country, for which they would sacrifice everything, but spend much of their lives abroad. I know many people like them (including my great aunt), but modern wealthy U.S. liberals as a group don’t seem to have this absolute willingness to spend years in prison for their ideals. In s India, they did.
I read quite a few book
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Prison and Chocolate Cake
memoir by Nayantara Sahgal
First US edition, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, |
| Author | Nayantara Sahgal |
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| Language | English |
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| Subject | Memoir |
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| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf (New York), Victor Gollancz Ltd (London) |
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Publication date | |
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| Followed&#;by | A Time to be Happy ()&#; |
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Prison and Chocolate Cake is the first of two early memoirs bygd Nayantara Sahgal, first published by Alfred A. Knopf (New York) and Victor Gollancz (London) in , and includes her childhood experiences of her family during the Indian independence movement in the s and '40s. It was written during the winter of –53 when she was 25, married and with two young children.
The title is based on an incident in the early s when Sahgal, at age three, witnessed police arrive to take her father to prison. At the time, the family were having chocolate cake for tea, a treat that day instead of the usual bread and butter. huvud to her story are her father, the classic schola