Provincials

Sumana Roy is the author of How I Became a Tree, a work of nonfiction; Missing: A Novel; My Mother’s Lover and Other Stories; and two poetry collections, Out of Syllabus and V.I.P.: Very Important Plant. She teaches at Ashoka University.

“A striking mix of memoir and literary analysis. . . . Provincials is a wise and whimsical exploration of writers and poets from uncool towns and the seemingly stagnant countryside.”—Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal“Roy is clear, wide-ranging, self-aware, and delightful.”—Sameer Pandya, Los Angeles Review of Books“Aided by a remarkable prose that is poetic, analytical and ruminating all at once, Roy interjects her narrative with childhood and adult memories, literary analysis, and life-histories of the provincials, famous and forgotten alike.”—Iman Kumar Mitra, Telegraph India“Moments of astounding clarity and beauty. . . . Roy’s text resonates with honesty and complexity, prompting readers to consider the relationships between location, identity, and memory—whether she is narrating childhood recollections or delving into the nuances of language and pronunciation.”—Swapna Peri, Storizen“Provincials is a playful, innovative, hybrid endeavor. Sumana Roy traverses literary culture and offers us a counter-canonical and vernacular appreciation of people, languages, cultures, traditions, and reading and writing practices.”—R. Radhakrishnan, author of History, the Human, and the World Between“Provincials is a work of enchanting originality and urgent relevance. Combining criticism, autobiography, and poetry, Sumana Roy reclaims provincialism as a cosmopolitanism rooted in the local and shaped by the embodied experience of place and language.”—Yota Batsaki, Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University“Sumana Roy’s wide-ranging intellect and singular style are on full display in this inspired amble through the republic of letters in search of belonging, house and home, and insight into the idea of the provincial. Roy’s inspired sensibility makes this a delightful read!”—Jeff Deutsch, author of In Praise of Good Bookstores