The Indian Diary of Vera Luboshinsky (1938-1945)

ISBN-13: 9780192889690 / Twarda / 2024 / 472 str.

Vera Luboshinsky

Recenzje

The authors skilfully edited and beautifully translated the diaries of Vera Luboshinsky from Russian, allowing access to a rare non-Anglophone, non-male gaze in high colonial India. It is a series of astute sketches of India, details at the court in the Princely state of Bhopal, and vignettes of colonial society. These are seamlessly strung together in this work, which may only be called a memoir in the most liberal sense. Written in crisp language, the text retains the complex tone of awe, irony, privilege, and sympathy for various characters through the book. An absolute must-read for all interested in colonial history, particularly of the Princely state of Bhopal, but also for those interested in the quirky destinies of individuals, and manuscripts!

O autorze

Vera Luboshinsky (1897-1978) was a Russian lawyer and writer, daughter of M. Y. Herzenstein, and wife of a nobleman, Mark Luboshinsky. Emigrating to Czechoslovakia after the Bolshevik coup and Mark's subsequent friendship with Hamidullah Khan, the Nawab of Bhopal, gave Vera the chance to live in one of India's most prominent princely states from 1938 to 1945. Fascinated by life in Bhopal, Vera was inspired to write her 'Indian Diary'. After returning from India to Czechoslovakia, Vera and Mark lived under another Communist power takeover. Vera's life ended in obscurity with no hope of returning to her earlier fortune. Dusan Deák is an Associate Professor at the Department of Comparative Religion, Comenius University in Bratislava. Deák holds a doctorate in history from the University of Pune (2002). His research focuses on the social and religious history of Western India, and on the reception of Indian ideas and practices in Central Europe. With Daniel Japers he has coedited the volume Rethinking western India (Orient Blackswan 2014) and published widely in English and Slovak. He is currently preparing a monograph on the processes of negotiating religious identities by the subaltern religious groups in Maharashtra. He has worked on European Commission-funded projects. Rowenna Baldwin obtained her PhD in Sociology in 2011 from the University of Warwick for a thesis exploring the subject of patriotism in the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Union. She has worked as a researcher on several European Commission-funded projects at Manchester Metropolitan University and most recently worked on the AHRC-funded Storylab project at the University of Central Lancashire. Since 2016, Rowenna has been retraining in the area of documentary filmmaking and now works as an independent filmmaker. She won her first award for directing in 2018.