Provincials

“A striking mix of memoir and literary analysis. . . . Provincials is a wise and whimsical exploration of writers and poets from uncool towns and the seemingly stagnant countryside.”—Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal

“Roy is clear, wide-ranging, self-aware, and delightful.”—Sameer Pandya, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Provincials is a playful, innovative, hybrid endeavor. Sumana Roy traverses literary culture and offers us a counter-canonical and vernacular appreciation of people, languages, cultures, traditions, and reading and writing practices.”—R. Radhakrishnan, author of History, the Human, and the World Between

“Provincials is a work of enchanting originality and urgent relevance. Combining criticism, autobiography, and poetry, Sumana Roy reclaims provincialism as a cosmopolitanism rooted in the local and shaped by the embodied experience of place and language.”—Yota Batsaki, Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University

“Sumana Roy’s wide-ranging intellect and singular style are on full display in this inspired amble through the republic of letters in search of belonging, house and home, and insight into the idea of the provincial. Roy’s inspired sensibility makes this a delightful read!”—Jeff Deutsch, author of In Praise of Good Bookstores