Conversations in Bloomsbury
It provides a rare insight into the intimate workings of the English modernist movement, portraying such prominent figures as Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence.
The form of the text allows Anand to set up an ironic distance between the voices of the Bloomsbury Group and the silent undercurrents of their conversations.
He shows that "modernism sought energies in the strangeness and distance of the other... in the terms that seemed to fit into its essentially Eurocentric framework".
The substantial distance between experience and publication allows for an extremely critical perspective, contrary to Anna Snaith's perspective of the bloomsbury group as representing "a Britishness to do with bohemian modernity and intellectual freedoms",[4] we are shown a collection of individuals who, although perceiving themselves to be at the forefront of liberal Britain, are often in fact ignorant in their conduct as regards Anands own culture and experience of British rule in India.
As Anand publishes his conversations in the 1980s, the authors he engages with have already been firmly cemented within the English literary modernist canon, only confirmed by the fact that most of them had passed away.
He chooses to publish his book at a time when postcolonial critical theory is at its height, suggesting that perhaps he is deliberately satirising the revered status of the Bloomsbury Group at a time when it was popular to scrutinise modernist ideas under postcolonial light, playing on their affirmed celebrity status, made possible only by this historical gap.
Eliot seems to act as Anand's mentor and he does menial work for Hogarth Press of which there is no record of payment.
However, at the same time there is a distinct undercurrent of cultural critique and social satire of both the literary figures and London as a metropolitan centre.
The parallels drawn between the Indian caste system and the separation of Public and Private bars in London reveals how Anand is critical of the notion that the metropolitan centre is superior to its colonial counterpart.
His own position is in favour of independence from British rule, demonstrated by his support of Gandhi's movement and being briefly jailed for his activism.
Anand presents the majority of the Bloomsbury Group as being relatively anti-imperialist, citing ethical objection as Leonard Woolf's main motivation for leaving the Civil Service in Ceylon.
His attitude towards Anand and Indian art in general is highly dismissive, as he criticises the aesthetics that don't align with his own definitions.
It is at once a portrait of an Indian ingenue and autodidact making his way, problematically, at times, into the inner circle of the Bloomsbury group; a biographical snapshot of the group's venerated literary figures; and an illustration of the ways in which Anand attempts to assert himself, and by extension, India and Indian culture, into his conversations with the coterie of Bloomsbury intellectuals surrounding politics (imperialism), philosophy, and literature.
As an Indian living in a society with a strong imperial presence in India that held the prejudice that came with it, Anand struggled to find his place within the intellectual community of Bloomsbury.
In the text, he describes how he exercised self-restraint over his strong political views, and engages in an internal dialogue in which he examines the role that race plays within literary modernism.
The text gives an insight into how his cultural background contributed to shaping his experience as a writer working within Eurocentric structures.
In the memoir, Anand perceives himself as a social commodity for the Bloomsbury group; he feels accepted more for his cultural identity than his intellect and personality.
