Selected Prose

That Nissim Ezekiel is arguably the most influential, widely read, and appreciated modern Indian poet writing in English is well known. Less well known is that he is also a prose writer of considerable stature, although he has written very extensively with great sensitivity, style, and distinction on literature, art, television, books, and a range of other subjects for well over three decades. This gap in perception stems primarily from his prose writing being scattered in newspapers, journals and introductions to other books, giving readers and critics little opportunity to see them as an intellectually and stylistically distinctive body of work, of an original, inquiring, questing mind, consistent in the view that there are no easy answers to the questions of life and art; that each individual must seek his own anew every time on every issue. This book remedies this gap in perception by bringing together some of Ezekiel's best prose arranged in five sections entitled "On Poetry," "On Philosophy," "On Art and Culture," "On Life and Thought," and "On Books."