In A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile, a memoir-infused travelogue that muses on "the demands of belonging," acclaimed British American writer Aatish Taseer relishes in the freedoms of the untethered life. Starting in Istanbul and journeying through Uzbekistan, Spain, Morocco, Iraq, and more, the essays in this collection find Taseer recalibrating his national identity after his unceremonious eviction from India, his family's ancestral home.
Taseer (The Twice-Born) is a New York-based writer for T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Born in England and raised in New Delhi, he struggled as a gay man with the burden of fitting in. The astonishing saga of why the nationalist Indian government revoked his citizenship is just the beginning of Taseer's remarkable story, one he embraces with "the simple joy of being out in the world, free of the pressures of belonging." Losing his home was staggeringly disorientating, but it freed Taseer from a bond he didn't realize was suffocating him.
On his travels, Taseer interrogates the building blocks of nationalism amid cultural perceptions of what people consider "native" and "alien" to their homelands, using food, perfume, and flowers as channels of discovery. A pilgrimage in Buddhist Mongolia offers reconciliation between painful episodes in Taseer's past and the joyful resurgence of his "natural curiosities"--in his own words, "a return to self."
Taseer is a gifted storyteller who absorbs his surroundings and invites readers to experience the distinctive nature of the places he has visited, complete with the sense of perspective that is an essential traveling companion. --Shahina Piyarali