Incomplete Echoes

Join us for a conversation on new books by Amit Chaudhuri and Anna Schultz, moderated by Philip V. Bohlman. 

Amit Chaudhuri, Incompleteness: New and Selected Essays, 1999–2023 

“I’m an Indian, so of course I write about India. But then, again, I don’t write about India. I’m not interested in writing about India. This means I’m not entirely, or comfortably, a part of the history of the Indian novel in English either. Nor can I be part of a history that’s now been appropriated by literary journalism and publishing houses: of the form of the novel. It’s not that I’m resistant to appropriation. I’m unfit for appropriation. This may be a good place to be in.” 

 A remarkable prose stylist and keen innovator of literary form, Amit Chaudhuri is one of the most singular voices in contemporary letters whose essays, like his fiction, defy categorization and display a sensibility uniquely his own. Incompleteness gathers some of Chaudhuri’s best essays and criticism from more than two decades. In these pieces, Chaudhuri turns his mind to everything from Rabindranath Tagore and Joni Mitchell to the troubles with Indian modernity and globalization’s appropriation of narrative storytelling over poetic incompleteness. Drolly humorous, and filled with unexpected insight, Incompleteness is incontrovertible proof that Chaudhuri is one of our most original and gifted interpreters of the world after globalization. 

Amit Chaudhuri  is a novelist, essayist, poet, and musician. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he lives in Calcutta and the United Kingdom. He has written eight novels, the latest of which is Sojourn. Among his other works are three books of essays, including The Origins of Dislike; a study of D.H. Lawrence's poetry; a book of short stories, Real Time; two works of nonfiction, including Finding the Raga; and four volumes of poetry. Formerly a professor of contemporary literature at the University of East Anglia, Chaudhuri is now a professor of creative writing and the director of the Centre for the Creative and the Critical at Ashoka University, as well as the editor of literaryactivism.com. He has made several recordings of Indian classical and experimental music, and has been awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Lost Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, the Indian government's Sahitya Akademi Award, and the James Tait Black Prize. 

Anna Schultz, Echoes of Translation: Audibility and Relationality in Indian Jewish Women’s Song 

This book explores sonic translation among the Bene Israel through the metaphor of the echo: a resonant, transformative, relational phenomenon. The Bene Israel are a Jewish community from western India who, over centuries, developed a distinctive identity in relation to other Jewish and non-Jewish communities, translating their sounds, words, and practices to have uniquely Marathi Jewish meaning. Some men sing Marathi Jewish songs, but over the past half century, women have assumed the important cultural role of stewarding these songs for the future. I think of Bene Israel women as translators creatively mediating the worlds around them through song. While they may not always be visible, they are audible, and this book seeks to amplify their relational soundings. Singing this repertoire teaches singers and listeners not only how to be Jewish, but how to be Bene Israel. It also fosters sociality, providing a medium through which women echo one another, sharing cultural expertise while securing affective ties. 

Anna Schultz is Professor and Chair of Music and the Arts and Humanities at the University of Chicago. Her first book is Singing a Hindu Nation: Marathi Devotional Performance and Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2013), and her second book is Echoes of Translation: Audibility and Relationality in Indian Jewish Women’s Song (Oxford University Press, 2026). With Sumanth Gopinath, she was awarded the H. Colin Slim Award by the American Musicological Society, and she received Honorable Mention for the Society of Ethnomusicology’s Jaap Kunst Prize. Dr. Schultz’s research has been supported by Fulbright-Hays, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Association of University Women, the Franke Institute of the Humanities, and the Neubauer Collegium, among other organizations.  
 

Philip V. Bohlman is Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History, Music, and the Humanities at the University of Chicago, and Honorarprofessor at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover. His research addresses the intersections of music and moral philosophy with race, nationalism, and colonial encounter. Among recent books are Song Loves the Masses (California 2017), Wie sängen wir Seinen Gesang auf dem Boden der Fremde! (LIT Verlag 2019), Wolokolamsker Chaussee (Bloomsbury 2021), and with the New Budapest Orpheum Society the 2015 Grammy Award-nominated CD, As Dreams Fall Apart: The Golden Age of Jewish Stage and Film Music, 1925–1955 (Cedille Records). Philip Bohlman is the 2022 International Balzan Prize Laureate in Ethnomusicology.