Anyone who wishes to understand what has happened in India in the twentieth century - politically and culturally - must read Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Among her men of letters he is unique; for the fertility of his mind and the polymathic range of his interests, as well as for the lucidity of his prose and his sheer integrity. — Geoffrey Moorhouse (Chaudhuri) has spent a lifetime kicking against the myths and shibboleths held by the majority of his fellow countrymen: he has ridiculed the pacifism of Mahatma Gandhi...he has castigated Indian nationalism for being corrupt, self-seeking, and destructive... (he has) vented his spleen at the stupidity and philistinism of the British in India. His latest (book) is almost a thousand pages long. It testifies to (his) eloquence, wit, and intellectual brilliance that he can go on at such length without once becoming a bore. — Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books