Fragments of exhilaration

Fragments Against My Ruin has tableaux of fortuitous encounters, new friendships, and the early stirrings of political ideologies that will influence his work as a writer

Fragments Against My Ruin: A Life 

Author: Farrukh Dhondy

Publisher: Context

Pages: 312

Price: Rs 699

In retrospect, the title of Farrukh Dhondy’s memoir Fragments Against My Ruin: A Life left me confounded. It is at odds with the substance of the book — a narrative of vivid, often exuberant recollections that moves swiftly, unencumbered by sentimental ramblings or digressions. The phrase “Fragments Against My Ruin” is a variation of a line that appears towards the end of T S Eliot’s 1922 poem, The Waste Land: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins.” Cracked images of Europe traumatised by the First World War lie