Writing Badly Is Easy
About this book
When Lord Macaulay introduced English as the instrument of education in India, healso bequeathed to us a legacy of language-use that is often stiff and bureaucratic. Thisawkwardness plagues academic, journalistic, legal, even creative writing in India.You fail as a writer if your writing is not concrete, if it is vague and abstract, and your readeris unable to see what you mean. Writing Badly is Easy is a style guide for those who want towrite well. It presents advice given by award-winning creative writers—including JonathanFranzen, Jennifer Egan, Suketu Mehta, Marilynne Robinson, George Saunders and ColsonWhitehead—and noted thinkers like Alain de Botton, Andrew Ross, Anna Tsing, KathleenStewart and Rob Nixon, as well as numerous others. Amitava Kumar’s own essays on writing,including his collaboration with Teju Cole, demonstrate the importance of blurring the linebetween critical and creative writing. A manifesto for writing that is exuberant, imaginativeand playful, Writing Badly is Easy will change the way you think about reading and writing,and reveal the pleasures to be had in the inventive use of language.