“A Return to Self : Excursions in Exile” by Aatish Taseer
Aatish Taseer’s A Return to Self : Excursions in Exile ( HarperCollins India) is a collection of essays written over a period of time. The opening essay begins with the loss of his Overseas Citizenship of India in 2019. It was revoked by the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs. As a result, Aatish, a British citizen, has been unable to visit India, the country where he grew up and lived for thirty years. This loss, both practical and spiritual, sent him on a journey of revisiting the places that formed his identity and, in the process, compelled him to ask broader questions about the complex forces that make a culture and nationality. According to Wikipedia, Aatish Taseer became a US citizen on 27 July 2020.
In Istanbul, he confronts the hopes and ambitions of his former self. In Uzbekistan, he sees how what was once the majestic portal of the Silk Road is now a tourist facade. In India, he explores why Buddhism, which originated here, is practiced so little. Everywhere he goes, the ancient world mixes intimately with the contemporary: with the influences of the pandemic, the rise of new food cultures, and the ongoing cultural battles of regions around the world. How do centuries of cultures evolving and overlapping, often violently, shape the people that subsequently emerge from them?
In this blend of travelogue and memoir, Taseer casts an incisive eye at what it means to belong to a place that becomes a politicized vessel for ideas defined by exclusion and prejudice, and delves deep into the heart of the migrations that define our multicultural world.
He acknowledges the “ambition, inspiration and, at times, sheer relentlessness of Hanya Yanagihara” without whom this book would not have been possible. Hanya Yanagihara is an incredibly powerful writer in her own right, with a powerful eye for detail, but more than that, she has the knack of embodying her written word with a force, an energy, that makes her works unforgettable. It is a rare talent. Aatish is fortunate to have her as his mentor. As he asks, who else would commission an eighteen-thousand-word piece on pilgrimage? In A Return to Self, Aatish Taseer has truly transformed as a writer. As writer and academic Amitava Kumar puts it eloquently, “Writers I admire travel to discover other states of mind. But the even more admirable ones travel also to find new parts of their most authentic selves. In these pages, Taseer is such a traveller: the maps he is working with are those of the world, and also of the body, the soul, and the senses. His findings are fascinating and rich.” The book extract that has been published on Moneycontrol is from Aatish Taseer’s trip to Mongolia. The peace at the centre of this travelogue is extremely powerful and this section of the book begs to be read over and over again.
With this book, Aatish’s voice is much stronger, clearer, sharper, and very sure of himself. He has made choices or they have been foisted upon him. No one is questionning the impact of those decisions made, but the quiet strength and steely determination that imbues this book, even in the extraordinary sections of meditative reflection, ensures his space on the literary stage in a powerful manner. Much to look forward to in the future with regard to Aatish’s literary ouevre — before and after 2019.
Aatish Taseer is the author of the memoir Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey Through Islamic Lands; the acclaimed novels The Way Things Were, a finalist for the 2016 Jan Michalski Prize, The Temple-Goers, short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award, and Noon; and the memoir and travelogue The Twice-Born. He is also the translator, from the Urdu, of Manto: Selected Stories by Saadat Hasan Manto. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He is a writer at large for T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Born in England, raised in New Delhi, and educated in the United States, Taseer now lives in New York.
1 Oct 2025
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