Amit Chaudhuri, "Finding the Raga" book event with  Paul Muldoon

Elliott Bay Book Company

Amit Chaudhuri discusses his book "Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music" with Paul Muldoon

A program that we believe will be globe-spanning in terms of who is where - with acclaimed writer/musician Amit Chaudhuri in Kolkata and his partner in conversation, esteemed poet/lyricist/critic Paul Muldoon, and we here in Seattle - is on tap here, occasioned by the U.S. publication of Amit Chaudhuri’s new book, <a href="https://www.elliottbaybook.com/book/9781681374789" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music (New York Review of Books)</a>. Adept in both Indian classical music and popular western music, as singer and instrumentalist, Amit Chaudhuri has long played a distinct role in bridging the two. “A syncretic work that draws on a great variety of Western and Indian sources and genres, combines memoir and musicology, and reads like an essay . . . [Chaudhuri’s] chronicle, like a raga, is a wonderful exposition of becoming.” —Michael Autrey, Booklist. “Supple, intricate and uncompromising, full of delicate observation and insight, Amit Chaudhuri’s Finding the Raga immerses us in the rigorous beauty and cosmology of Indian classical music. It is also a loving memoir about relationships and places, dedication and vocation.” —Geoff Dyer. Amit Chauduri is a professor of Contemporary Literature at Britain’s University of East Anglia, and the author of five novels, a non-fiction book, Calcutta, for which he visited Seattle, and works of literary criticism. Joining Amit Chaudhuri for this program is Irish poet, opera librettist, critic, and translator Paul Muldoon. Presently a professor at Princeton University, he is the much-honored author of fourteen books of poetry, including <a href="https://www.elliottbaybook.com/book/9780374539108" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Frolic and Detour </a>the forthcoming (August) <a href="https://www.elliottbaybook.com/book/9780374602956" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Howdie-Skelp (Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux).</a> He also has a performance hand in the music world, occasionally appearing with the spoken word music group, Rogue Oliphant. This should be a delight. More about our speakers: Amit Chaudhuri is the author of seven novels, including, most recently, Friend of My Youth. Among his other published works are collections of short stories, poetry, and essays, as well as the nonfiction Calcutta, and a critical study of D. H. Lawrence’s poetry. He has received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Sahitya Akademi Award, among other accolades. Chaudhuri is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds the titles of Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia in England and Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University in India. In addition, he is a singer in the North Indian classical tradition and a composer and performer in a project that brings together the raga, blues, and jazz with a variety of other musical traditions. In 2017 he received the Sangeet Samman from the government of West Bengal for his contribution to Indian classical music.Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951. He now lives in New York. A former radio and television producer for the BBC in Belfast, he has taught at Princeton University for more than thirty years. He is the author of fourteen collections of poetry including Howdie-Skelp, due from FSG and Faber and Faber in 2021. Among his awards are the 1972 Eric Gregory Award, the 1980 Sir Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, the 1994 T.S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2006 European Prize for Poetry, the 2015 Pigott Poetry Prize, the 2017 Queens Gold Medal for Poetry, and the 2020 Michael Marks Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Amit Chaudhuri, "Finding the Raga" book event with Paul Muldoon

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Amit Chaudhuri, "Finding the Raga" book event with Paul Muldoon

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