Book Description
A blend of travelog and memoir spanning from Turkey to Mexico, exploring Aatish Taseer’s uniquely blended identity and asking: Why do certain cities become epicenters of great historical shifts and sites of unpredictable communities?
In 2019, the government of Prime Minister Narenda Modi revoked Aatish Taseer’s Indian citizenship, thereby exiling him from the country where he grew up and lived for thirty years. This loss, both practical and spiritual, sent him on a journey of revisiting the places that formed his identity, and asking broader questions about the complex forces that make a culture and a nationality, in the process.
In Istanbul, he confronts the hopes and ambitions of his former self. In Uzbekistan, he sees how what was once the majestic portal of the Silk Road is now a tourist façade. In India, he explores why Buddhism, which originated there, is so little practiced. Everywhere he goes, the ancient world mixes intimately with the contemporary: with the influences of the pandemic, the rise of new food cultures, and the ongoing cultural battles of regions around the world. How do centuries of cultures evolving and overlapping, often violently, shape the people that subsequently emerge from them?
In thoughtful prose that combines reportage with romanticism, Taseer casts an incisive eye at what it means to belong to a place that becomes an unstable, politicized vessel for ideas defined by exclusion and prejudice, and gets to the human heart of the shifts and migrations that define our multicultural world.
Praise For This Book
"In A Return to Self, Aatish Taseer shows us how to see the world: He reveals what's beneath the facades, what we're missing, how it's all connected—and also how it all feels, tastes, and smells. He takes us deeper, while understanding that the surface is a reality too." —Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sontag: Her Life and Work“From the high Andes to the heart of Mongolia, Aatish Taseer writes as captivatingly about history, spirituality, and the senses as he does poignantly. These essays, suffused with themes of connection and separation, deliver a lyrical meditation on how traveling far from home can bring you closer to yourself.” —Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch
“At once restless and meditative, A Return to Self is a writer’s journey into the liminal spaces—of memory, nationality, culture, and sexuality—that we inhabit. From a collection of moving and erudite travel pieces, Aatish Taseer brilliantly creates a portrait of the outsider, whose search for belonging defines the age in which we live.” —Tash Aw, author of Strangers on a Pier
"Writers I admire travel to discover other states of mind. But the even more admirable ones travel also to find new parts of their most authentic selves. In these pages, Taseer is such a traveler: the maps he is working with are those of the world, and also of the body, the soul, and the senses. His findings are fascinating and rich." —Amitava Kumar, author of My Beloved Life
