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  • Home in the World

  • A Memoir
  • By: Amartya Sen
  • Narrated by: Steven Crossley
  • Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (11 ratings)

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Home in the World

By: Amartya Sen
Narrated by: Steven Crossley
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The extraordinary early life in India and England of one of the world's leading public intellectuals.

Where is 'home'? For Amartya Sen home has been many places - Dhaka in modern Bangladesh, where he grew up; the village of Santiniketan, where he was raised by his grandparents as much as by his parents; Calcutta, where he first studied economics and was active in student movements and Trinity College, Cambridge, to which he came aged 19.

Sen brilliantly recreates the atmosphere in each of these. Central to his formation was the intellectually liberating school in Santiniketan founded by Rabindranath Tagore (who gave him his name Amartya) and enticing conversations in the famous Coffee House on College Street in Calcutta. As an undergraduate at Cambridge, he engaged with many of the leading figures of the day. This is a book of ideas - especially Marx, Keynes and Arrow - as much as of people and places.

In one memorable chapter, Sen evokes 'the rivers of Bengal' along which he travelled with his parents between Dhaka and their ancestral villages. The historic culture of Bengal is wonderfully explored, as is the political inflaming of Hindu-Muslim hostility and the resistance to it. In 1943, Sen witnessed the Bengal famine and its disastrous development. Some of Sen's family were imprisoned for their opposition to British rule: not surprisingly, the relationship between Britain and India is another main theme of the book. Forty-five years after he first arrived at 'the Gates of Trinity', one of Britain's greatest intellectual foundations, Sen became its Master.

©2022 Amartya Sen (P)2022 Penguin Audio
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Marvellous

What a wonderful man! A privilege to live in a world with him in it. I fell in love with his mind long ago. Now I feel I know him personally

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An introduction to a real knowledgeable person

The book is a great intro for those who wants to discover Sen. It gives a lot of context and clarifies the depth of the character, giving sense to Sen’s achievements.

Big applause to the narrator, who brilliantly transmitted thoughts and emotions. He brought some small accent to give life to Sen’s voice without sounding fake. On the contrary - he sounded realistic and involving.

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Inappropriate reader, perhaps?

I had high hopes for this autobiography, but was disappointed. Perhaps it was the plummy tones if the narrator who also uses peculiar phrasing of his breath while reading. Or it might have been the relentlessly sunny outlook of Sen, who seems to have had the most idyllic of childhoods and is so well adjusted and upbeat all the time, it is hard to relate to what he recounts. What a fortunate man to have been so blessed. For me, I had to give up after a while.

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