Contents: Introduction. Prologue: 1. England/Nirad C. Chaudhuri. 2. Good advice is rarer than rubies/Salman Rushdie. 3. A to Z street atlas/Amitav Ghosh. 4. Goodbye party for Miss Pushpa T.S/Nissim Ezekiel. I. 1. Advertisements in Brighton 1822-38/Dean Mahomed. 2. My first visit to England/Sunity Devee. 3. Letters and notes/Rabindranath Tagore. 4. In England and South Africa/M.K. Gandhi. 5. Letters/Sarojini Naidu. 6. The sum total of good I can do/Subhas Chandra Bose. 7. In the modern world/Jawaharlal Nehru. 8. Lions and shadows in the Sherry party in Harold Monro’s poetry bookshop/Mulk Raj Anand. 9. Red Indians in England/Qurratulain Hyder. II. 1. My America/R.K. Narayan. 2. Changes of scenery/Dom Moraes. 3. Speaking in tongues/Farrukh Dhondy. 4. Naturalized citizen No. 984-5165/Ved Mehta. 5. Some Indian uses of history on a rainy day/A.K. Ramanujan. 6. The ceremony of farewell/V.S. Naipaul. 7. Eating the eggs of love/Salman Rushdie. 8. Two ways to belong in America/Bharati Mukherjee. 9. Wild women, wild men/Hanif Kureishi. 10. The cowpath to America/Abraham Verghese. III. 1. Oxford/Amit Chaudhuri. 2. Indoor language/Meera Syal. 3. Gold emporium/Meera Syal. 4. The first letter home/Anurag Mathur. 5. Vegetarian summer/Anita Desai. 6. When on route 80 in Ohio/Agha Shahid Ali. 7. Swimming lessons/Rohinton Mistry. 8. The Imam and I/Amitav Ghosh. 9. Flight/Amitava Kumar. Epilogue: 1. There’s no place like home/Pankaj Mishra.

"Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate brings together the writings of thirty-three distinguished figures of Indian origin—writers as well as nationalist icons—whose writings portray vividly, and with utmost honesty, a struggle to define the relationship between the homeland they have seemingly left behind the new world they have come to be a part of.

"Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s and Amitav Ghosh’s imaginary landscapes of England are juxtaposed with first-hand accounts of Tagore’s first journey on an airplane in Persia and Jawaharlal Nehru’s travels across the world campaigning for India’s freedom. Naipaul gives a moving account of his sister’s funeral ceremony in Trinidad that is replete with traditional rituals, while Ved Mehta reports on the experience of applying for citizenship in America. Rushdie narrates a delightful story about a young woman’s attempt to get a British visa and Hanif Kureishi gives us a brutal description of a lesbian double-act at a party in Southall. Amit Chaudhuri writes of the lives of Indian students at Oxford; Meera Syal recounts hilarious anecdotes about first-and second-generation migrants in England; Anita Desai describes a young man’s first encounter with suburban America; and Agha Shahid Ali sums it all up eloquently; ‘India always exists off the turnpikes of America.’

"Also included are memoirs, correspondences and fictional writings of Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu, Qurratulain Hyder, Dom Moraes, A.K. Ramanujan, Bharati Mukherjee, Rohinton Mistry, Abraham Verghese, Pankaj Mishra and others.

"Beginning with an incisive introduction by Amitava Kumar, aptly titled ‘Longing and Belonging’, Away reflects the changing attitudes and responses to the west across generations of immigrants and the evolution of the particular brand of writing we call Indian writing in English."