Amitava Kumar

For years, in the wake of Rushdie, I had imagined magical realism to be the last refuge of the non-resident Indian.

I don't think any writer is a friend to the reader if he or she is not funny.

My own personal conviction is that if I were writing without thinking about how images or how journalism is creating a world for us, I would not be happy about it.

In fiction, you don't invent the events. What is imaginative about it is the consciousness: how you think about the events and how you present them. And that changes the nature of everything, and that is the attraction of writing fiction.

I have always kept notes and have kept letters from my friends and mother, which is rather depressing, as it takes you to the past.

My past makes me an insider, but my profession makes me an outsider. A writer always stands outside to report on reality.