McGill Conversation | Witness to a Setting Sun? Rudyard Kipling’s Traffics and Discoveries
Join Alberto Manguel and Anita Rau Badami for a lively discussion of Kipling’s work in the context of multiculturalism, colonialism, and modernity.
How complex was Kipling’s relationship to his native India? Marking the first signs of a setting sun for the British Empire, Rudyard Kipling’s Traffic and Discoveries shows the author grappling with new technology and new politics, all while retaining his supremely keen eye for vivid imagery and sensory detail. An annotated manuscript of the work, which Kipling gave to the University in 1907, provides precious insight into his creative process.
Doors open for a light reception at 5 PM.
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This event is presented in collaboration with the Friends of the McGill Library
Anita Rau Badami is the author of four novels: Tamarind Mem, The Hero’s Walk, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, and Tell it to the Trees. Anita’s books are critically acclaimed and have been published in several languages across the world. She is the recipient of awards including the Marian Engel Prize, the Regional Commonwealth Award, and the Premio Berto Prize for International Literature. Her books have been nominated for various other awards such as the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction), the Kiriyama Prize, and the IMPAC Dublin Prize for literature. Her second novel The Hero’s Walk was a Canada Reads 2016 finalist. Anita is currently working on her fifth novel “The Reason Why” which will, hopefully, be out in 2020.
Alberto Manguel is an Argentinian-Canadian writer, translator, editor and critic, born in Buenos Aires in 1948. He has published several novels, and non-fiction, including Packing My Library, Curiosity, With Borges, A History of Reading, The Library at Night and (together with Gianni Guadalupi) The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. He has received numerous international awards, among others the Commander of the Order of Arts & Letters from France, the Formentor Prize and the Alfonso Reyes Prize in 2017, and the Gutenberg Prize 2018. He is doctor honoris causa of the universities of Ottawa and York in Canada, and Liège in Belgium and Anglo Ruskin in Cambridge, UK. Until August of 2018 he was the director of the National Library of Argentina.
