A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile

In this exquisite collection of travel dispatches, memoirist and novelist Taseer (The Dog of Tithwal) reflects on his relationship to place, what it means to be cut off from one’s home, and what leads to the formation of national identity and the rise of nationalism. At the outset, Taseer, who was born in Britain but raised in India and was a dual citizen of both countries, relates how in 2019 India’s government revoked his citizenship after he wrote an article critical of Prime Minister Narenda Modi. The government’s pretext was that Taseer had “concealed the Pakistani origins of my father” (an “odd accusation” because Taseer had written multiple books and essays about his father, the former governor of Punjab). This experience of bizarre, identity-based targeting by a nationalist government causes Taseer to begin to see his travels—which were commissioned by T magazine—in a new light. He becomes increasingly attuned to the palimpsest nature of place—with multiple identities and time periods layered over one spot—as well as the interconnectedness of the world at any given time. For instance, he finds Turkey in the throes of a nationalist wave deeply similar and seemingly directly connected to developments in India. Meanwhile in Mexico, he encounters similarities not borne of modern connections, but of a long-ago identitarian movement, the Reconquista, when Spain expelled its Muslim and Jewish populations. Sumptuously written and elegantly observed, this is a stunning and immersive vision of a fully interdependent world. (July)