Reviews for Conversations in Bloomsbury

The average rating for Conversations in Bloomsbury based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-03-11 00:00:00 David Jennings Mulk Raj Anand has his own inimitable style of conveying his thoughts. This book belongs to that genre. He is, for change, not telling a story. It comprises a set of conversations that he had with some litterateurs in London over a period of time when a "war"was being waged against the British Empire in India. For him "the humiliation of being inferior seemed like a wound in his (my) soul which would never heal. The more he (I) licked it the more tender it became". He is pretty candid in his assertions: "I decided in my mind that I would fight for the freedom of my country forever, though I may admire these English writers for their literary skills". Indeed, he did fight with his mighty pen. He did, however, accept that he was being a hypocrite in "hating the British rule in India and living on its dole". Some of the comments of the luminaries, like Leonard Woolf, could be true of India as well, even now : "Our politicians want to run everything as a private joke. Polite enough on the surface! Vicious underneath!"

Review # 2 was written on 2010-09-17 00:00:00 TRENT MORRIS A really bizarre book in a great way. Anand met (it seems) a bunch of the Bloomsbury people in the 20s, and in the 80s he decided to write about it. The result is somewhere between memoir and autobiography and history. Eliot is the biggest prig ever, and V. Woolf is a goddess for Anand, who recreates Bloomsbury from the perspective of a colonial outsider in a weird but captivating way.