A man at an intersection of identities

While books by writers such as EM Forster and Rudyard Kipling continue to find readers, others who were once popular or controversial have drifted to the fringes of public attention. JR Ackerley, Nirad C Chaudhuri and Aubrey Menen are in the latter category.Their writings are so rooted in their eras that their concerns and characterisations may seem wayward to contemporary readers.

- Syed Saad Ahmed

The gaze with which they describe India and its people can occasionally be Orientalist. And yet, their being relics of bygone times makes them fascinating.

Born in London in 1912 to an Indian father and Irish mother, Aubrey Menen went to college in the UK and subsequently moved to Italy, where he became a fulltime writer. He converted to Catholicism and was later inspired by the Upanishads to discover his “true self”.

Speaking Tiger Books has now compiled two of Aubrey Menen's memoirs, Dead Man in the Silver Market (1953) and The Space Within the Heart (1970), into an omnibus edition titled A Stranger in Three Worlds. The former work pokes holes in patriotism and its pretensions, whether of the English, the Indians or others.Menen infuses the weightiest of issues with irony, resulting in several laugh-out-loud moments. He mocks ideas of propriety by highlighting how they differ across regions.