Portrait of India

by Ved Mehta

Stretching from the snowcapped Himalayas to the droughtprone state of Tamil Nadu, India is a vast and enigmatic country, full of contrasts. "Portrait of India" presents Ved Mehta's impressions of his native land - his first-hand report on India's villages and cities, its religions, politics and wars, its poets, philosophers, maharajas, and priests. Published in 1970 and now reissued with a new preface by its author, the book evokes the enormous variety of India for the Western reader.

Genres: History, India, Nonfiction

614 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Indian-American journalist Ved Parkash Mehta

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ved_Mehta

Reviews

[Shantal]

I really, really wanted to like this book. I've been looking for a book that captures my own experiences with India and helps me reflect on my identity. Though the writing was beautiful, I didn't find the story or narrative captivating.

[Jonathan Birch · Rating 3 out of 5]

A curiously maximalist picture of India in the late 1960s. Mehta has travelled a lot and read a lot, and seemingly doesn't want to leave anything out, and so the book contains very lengthy block quotations and some quite substantial sections consisting of pasted notes from his notebooks. The result is overwhelming. It's a book to dip into and out of, not something many people are going to read cover to cover. When I did dip in, I found the material interesting about 80% of the time, but found myself skipping through the rest. With tougher editing, this could have been terrific.