Duke University Press Of Gardens and Graves: Kashmir, Poetry, Politics

In Of Gardens and Graves Suvir Kaul examines the disruption of everyday life in Kashmir in the years following the region's pervasive militarization in 1990. Kaul's autobiographical and analytical essays, which were prompted by his yearly visits to Kashmir, are a combination of political analysis, literary criticism, memoir, and journalistic observation. In them he explores Kashmir's pre- and post-Partition history, the effects of militarization, state repression, the suspension of civil rights on Kashmiris, and the challenge Kashmir represents to the practice of democracy in India. The volume also features translations of Kashmiri poetry written in these years of conflict. These poems constitute an archive of heightened feelings and desires that affectively interrogate official accounts of Kashmir while telling us much about those who face extraordinary political turbulence and violence. Of Gardens and Graves also contains a photo essay by Javed Dar, whose photographs work together with Kaul's essays and the poems to represent the interweaving of ordinary life, civic strife, and spectacular violence in Kashmir. Review “Suvir Kaul’s impressive volume, bringing poems and photographs along with interpretative essays on the politics and history of Kashmir, tells us what has gone wrong (and is still going wrong) in Kashmir and how the security concerns of the state take precedence over the daily suffering and trauma of ordinary people. . . . Kaul’s text is dramatically highlighted as we witness firsthand this human tragedy through the poems and photographs of this magnificent book.” Author: Reeta C. Tremblay Source: Pacific Affairs "An eloquent appeal to the reader to understand the everyday experience of those who live in militarised Kashmir. . . . An important book that neither sentimentalises the suffering of Kashmir’s people, nor offers an abstracted analysis of their political predicament. The interweaving of essay, poetry and photography makes for a richer understanding of the ways in which global events impact on both region and on the individual within it." Author: Cathy Turner Source: Postcolonial Studies "This book on Kashmir offers something significant as somebody has for the first time collected Kashmiri writings written under the siege." Source: Kashmir Times Review " Of Gardens and Graves offers a new and necessary approach to political violence. Combining lucid historical, political, and literary analysis with stunning photographs by Javed Dar and a bilingual archive of Kashmiri poetry, Suvir Kaul’s book reveals how collective trauma permeates social life—but also how artists and writers have responded creatively to catastrophe. Intensely focused on the conflict in Kashmir, Kaul nevertheless opens up questions of global concern." Author: Michael Rothberg, author of Source: Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization From the Author Suvir Kaul is A. M. Rosenthal Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and the author, most recently, of Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Postcolonial Studies.   Javed Dar is an award-winning photojournalist with the Xinhua News Agency in Srinagar and has covered the conflict in Kashmir for more than a decade. About the Author Suvir Kaul is A. M. Rosenthal Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and the author, most recently, of Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Postcolonial Studies. Javed Dar is an award-winning photojournalist with the Xinhua News Agency in Srinagar and has covered the conflict in Kashmir for more than a decade.