In his lecture, “The Peripheral Imagination: Writing the Invisible India”, Aruni Kashyap will talk about his journey as a writer from India’s northeast – a region that rarely finds representation in India’s literary, cultural and political discourse. He will also briefly discuss the Assamese separatist movement: the backdrop against which his forthcoming novel unfolds.
The House With a Thousand Novels (Penguin India, 2013), is set in India’s northeastern state of Assam. Though Assam is famous around the world for its tea, few know the state has been the site of an armed secessionist conflict for the last three decades. His novel tells the story of a joint-family in rural Assam, during the “Secret killings of Assam” – a series of brutal extra-judicial killings of rebel sympathizers, allegedly sanctioned by the Indian government during the late 90s in order to weaken the separatist movement.
