Memoirs: Habib Tanvir

As the man who brought the popular and the demotic into modern Indian theatre, Habib Tanvir is one of Asia's most important and gifted theatre directors. In these memoirs, touching on both the private and the public aspects of his life with startling candour, he takes us on a journey from his childhood in Raipur to the Bombay film world of the 1940s and thence to Indian People's Theatre Association, offering an invaluable window into twentieth-century India. Whether he is describing his family members, friends or his actors, Habib Tanvir is superbly observant and sharply insightful, capturing both the quotidian and the quirky in his distinct style and delightful voice and the ease of Mahmood Farooqui's translation matches the lively cadence of Tanvir's prose. Written with great warmth, humour and insight, these memoirs provide a memorable and fully engaging portrait of an extraordinary man.