Anyone who wishes to understand what has happened in India in the twentieth century politically and culturally must read Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Among her men of letters he is unique; for the fertility of his mind and the polymathic range of his interests, as well as for the lucidity of his prose and his sheer integrity.— Geoffrey Moorhouse(Chaudhuri) has spent a lifetime kicking against the myths and shibboleths held by the majority of his fellow countrymen: he has ridiculed the pacifism of Mahatma Gandhi...he has castigated Indian nationalism for being corrupt, selfseeking, and destructive... (he has) vented his spleen at the stupidity and philistinism of the British in India. His latest (book) is almost a thousand pages long. It testifies to (his) eloquence, wit, and intellectual brilliance that he can go on at such length without once becoming a bore.— Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books