Kashyap’s stories, told through the accounts of the Assamese student, writer, researcher, and villager, made me see Assam on its own terms, and the rest of the world through the eyes of Assam.
Whether “It’s a [family] story we don’t like / to tell” or the shifting of roles and a meditation on death “In the book we are reading together,” wisdom closes its hand over sentiment.
We are once again living through an age when this fight over the purpose of storytelling, whose stories deserve to be heard, and how freely ideas should circulate is heated.
By recasting this Slavophile opus as a critique of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy, with a grand sense of philosophical rigor, Sun models anti-imperial engagement with the Russian canon.