Essential anthology

Book review of The Book of Indian Essays: Two Hundred Years of English Prose

About halfway through the book under review artist F N Souza describes discovering a book of old English essays in a dilapidated house in rural Goa: “The book was an outdated edition of English essays by authors as ancient as itself.” The same description cannot be applied to the current volume, but it is not too far from the mark either. An anthology is judged as much for what it leaves out as what it includes, and when Arvind Mehrotra — one of India’s leading English poets and anthologists — edits a volume, expectations are pretty high. So are the