‘Without death, there is no art’: How Amitava Kumar’s new novel came to be

The last exchange I had with my father was on the morning of March 7 last year. That same morning, I had learned from a phone call that I had been awarded a fellowship at the Cullman Center in the New York Public Library. For the previous twenty-four hours, due to reasons that were not clear to anyone, my father had been unwell.

My elder sister, whom I call Didi, is a doctor. She lived with our father in Patna. She told me that the previous day our father had gone for his usual walk in the public park across the street from the house. Everything had been okay till then. Then he began to throw up.

The next morning, Didi decided to take him to a gastrointestinal hospital for tests. When they reached the hospital, my father walked in by himself, refusing any help, but after a while, he began to feel breathless. All this was new; he had not had any such complaints ever before. Didi asked for our father to be put on oxygen support.

When I got the call from Cullman Center, I texted Didi so that the news could be shared with my father. I was no longer required to teach...

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