Antoine Roquentin, a thirty-five-year-old bachelor lives alone in Bouville, an imaginary town that recalls Havre. He is working on a book about the life of the late Marquis of Rollebon, an aristocrat of the late eighteenth century, and living off his income, after leaving a job in Indochina, the fatigue of travel and what he believes to be the adventure. This awareness marks one of Sartre’s first important thoughts in the book. Roquentin is no longer compatible with the bourgeoisie or Mr. Bouville Rollebon who quickly seems boring and uninteresting, since history is about what has existed, and never an existing one can justify the existence of another Existing. It was then, in one of the most philosophical passages of the book, that he relates how dizzying he is conscious.
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‘To be sure, When Google Met WikiLeaks is a vital book, an admirably direct and clear-eyed attempt to make sense of the modern-day privacy and freedom of speech debates’—The Sunday Guardian
‘For those interested to know how present-day geopolitics, surveillance, censorship and publishing (if not foreign policy itself) are being shaped by the gods of the internet, this is recommended reading’—The Telegraph
‘In When Google Met Wikileaks, Assange makes a case for the dark net by suggesting that the open web site we all know best has sinister intentions’—The Independent
‘The most important accomplishment of the book may be the connection Assange establishes between the Google Politic and the ambitions set loose in Digital Age’—Prague Post
Translated from the Hindi by Madhu Singh With a foreword by Angela Y. Davis
September 1970. Ramchandra Singh enters the Hardoi District Jail in Uttar Pradesh as a naxalite undertrial. Barely twenty, his life of expanding prospects—in studies, politics and love—is reduced to the horizon of a life term. The odds are stacked against the survival of his humanity and imagination, but Singh regenerates his gifts of empathy, humour, reflection and, above all, language—in a secret diary smuggled out with the help of friends.
A singular record of recent history and of individual witness, Singh’s prison diary, newly expanded, appears in English for the first time. Offering unprecedented intimacy with the everyday life of the imprisoned everyman, Singh challenges us to look without flinching and question our assumptions about crime and punishment.
Ramchandra Singh (1949–2018), of Bangarmau village in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, was a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Red Star, and served on its Central Committee. He was part of the editorial board of Red Star Monthly (Hindi). He passed away when this book was in press.
Madhu Singh is a professor in the Department of English and Modern European Languages, University of Lucknow. She has previously translated the scholar G.N. Devy’s work, A Nomad Called Thief, into Hindi as Ghumantu Hain Chor Nahin.
Stretcher-Bearer of Empire
In the pantheon of global liberation heroes, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has pride of place. Leaders like Mandela have lauded him as being part of the epic battle to defeat the white regime and prepare the way for a non-racial country. A popular sentiment in South Africa goes: ‘India gave us Mohandas, and we returned him to you as Mahatma’.
Against this background, The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire unravels the complex story of a man who, throughout his stay on African soil (1893–1914), remained true to Empire while expressing disdain for Africans. For Gandhi, whites and Indians were bound by an Aryan bloodline that had no place for the African. His racism was matched by his class (and caste) prejudice towards the Indian indentured. He persistently claimed that they were ignorant and needed his leadership, and wrote their struggles out of history—struggles this book documents.
The authors show that Gandhi never missed an opportunity to demonstrate his loyalty to Empire, with a particular penchant for war. He served as stretcher-bearer in the war between Brit and Boer, demanded that Indians be allowed to carry fire-arms, and recruited volunteers for the imperial army in both England and India during the First World War.
Ashwin Desai is Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. His previous books include South Africa: Still Revolting, ‘We are the Poors’: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa and Reading Revolution: Shakespeare on Robben Island among others.
Goolam Vahed is Associate Professor of History at the University of KwaZulu Natal. He writes on histories of migration, ethnicity, religion, and identity formation among Indian South Africans.
This book made history. It wasn’t banned, not quite, when it first appeared in 1984, but its disappearance was cleverly managed so that few got to read the only authentic account of how a protected kingdom became India’s twenty-second state. As the Hon. David Astor, editor of The Observer in London, wrote, Sunanda K. Datta-Ray was ‘alone in witnessing and communicating the essential story’. He had to surmount many obstacles and incur severe disapproval to do so. Nearly thirty years later, a revised edition with the author’s long new introduction reads like an exciting thriller. Rich with dances and durbars, lamaist rituals, intrigue and espionage, it brings vividly to life the dramatis personae of this Himalayan drama—Sikkim’s sad last king, Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal, and his vivacious American queen, Hope Cooke; bumbling Kazi Lendhup Dorji and his scheming Kazini, whose nationality and even her name were shrouded in mystery, and who played into the hands of more powerful strategists. Citing documents that have not been seen by any other writer, the book analyses law and politics with masterly skill to recreate the Sikkim saga against the background of a twentieth-century Great Game involving India and China. Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim didn’t only make history. It is history.
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