Incarnations

Born out of a highly successful series of BBC podcasts, Incarnations is “a sort of pointillist biography of the [Indian] subcontinent told through a wonderfully diverse and inclusive cast of characters” (William Dalrymple). In this illustrated lecture, author Sunil Khilnani takes us through the lives of fifty men and women who transformed their country, their religion, their art, and the world.

“Khilnani has triumphantly taken on this tendency by writing a history of South Asia in fifty warts-and-all lives”¦ These range from a mystic prince born in the fifth century BC to a former petrol pump attendant turned business mogul who died in 2002, encompassing on the way a kaleidoscope of kings, sultans, princes and politicians, mathematicians, orientalists, physicians and freedom fighters, film-makers, philosophers, artists and poets. Beautifully written with both scholarship and an enviably light touch, thoughtfully constructed and enviably erudite in its wide-ranging references, and as much at ease discussing higher mathematics and philosophy as politics and art, Incarnations is a major work by one of India’s most impressive minds, and the best possible introduction to both the complexities and the charms of Indian history.” —William Dalrymple, The Guardian.

Presented with The India Center Foundation