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A Stranger in Three Worlds: Tracing Aubrey Menen's search for identity
With biting wit, Menen maps the universality of exclusion
Amritesh Mukherjee
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A Stranger in Three Worlds: The Memoirs of Aubrey Menen
Published by Speaking Tiger
280 pages ₹499
The soul of humanity lies in contradictions. We are as charged with kindness as beset with cruelty, as quick to judge as yearning to be heard, and as mindless in existence as reflective in every moment. Aubrey Menen, the British writer whose satirical retelling of the Ramayana, Rama Retold was banned in India in 1955, was a man who knew how to capture those contradictions. It feels fitting, then, that his two autobiographies, republished recently, have polar perspectives on identity and nationality. Or
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