Sunlight on the Garden: A Story of Childhood and Youth

Andre Béteille

Penguin Books India

304 pages, R499

This memoir from India’s most brilliant sociologist encompasses the worlds of colonial Chandannagar, where Béteille spent his early years; of Patna and Calcutta where he went to school; and of his college days where he started off as a physicist and then turned to sociology—a field in which he was to win international renown. Béteille describes momentous events he lived through such as famine, communal riots and Partition, and draws compelling portraits of Calcutta’s intellectual stars, among them Sukhamoy Chakravarty and Amartya Sen.