Landscapes of Writing

This book is a collection of essays by international writer Bapsi Sidhwa gathered for the first time in one edition by Teresa Russo, with a foreword written by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Deepa Mehta. Landscapes of Writing: Collected Essays of Bapsi Sidhwa provides a writer’s perspective on issues of South Asian literature, linguistics, poetry, and views of political events and globalization. In the first part of the book, Bapsi Sidhwa discusses her childhood, family life, and how she became a writer. There is also a revised essay detailing how her book Cracking India became a film by Deepa Mehta. The second part of the book focuses on her thoughts concerning war, terrorism, and how to achieve peace. This collection includes two letters, demonstrating her local and nationalistic perspectives to a larger view of an interconnected world.

Bapsi Sidhwa is an international novelist, known for her perspective on the partition of the Indian subcontinent as a Parsi woman. The Crow Eaters (1980), Ice Candy Man (1982; published as Cracking India, 1988), The Pakistani Bride (1983), An American Brat (1993), and Water (2006) have been translated into several languages. Born in 1938 in Karachi, Sidhwa grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, and now lives in Houston, Texas. She received a degree from Kinnaird College in Lahore and taught at Mount Holyoke College, Brandeis University, Columbia University, Rice University, and the University of Texas at Houston. Sidhwa was also a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe-Harvard and the recipient of numerous awards, such as the prestigious German prize LiBeraturepreis (1991); the Italian Premio Mondello for her novel Water (2007); and both the lifetime achievement award in Pakistan and the "Great Immigrants: The Pride of America" prize by the Carnegie Corporation in 2013.

Teresa Russo is an educator, scholar, and poet. She is the editor of Recognition and Modes of Knowledge: Anagnorisis from Antiquity to Contemporary Theory (2013), examining how recognition theory has played a central role in the arts and humanities throughout history. She has a PhD from the University of Toronto in comparative literature and has taught courses in the arts and humanities at the Catholic University of America, American University, the University of Toronto, and Brock University. Her poetry has appeared in various publications, including The Silenus (Oxford, U.K.) and Verbi Gratia (Washington, D.C.).