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Title: Taught Disappointment
Review: The star rating is insufficient here. I taught this text to college sophomores recently and realized too late just how difficult the text is. True, there are marvelous complexities and wonderfully wrought ironies and historical insights. But there are also pages of confusion with relatively little pay off. This text might well be taught in conjunction with a detailed Indian (or Pakistani or Bangladeshi) history. Without it (and without an immense amount of time), this book is better left for graduate study.That said, I will repeat what others have said ad nauseam: there is a large amount of difference between enjoyment and appreciation. Some of Mr. Ghosh's work is indeed remarkably worth appreciating; it is sometimes less than enjoyable. As a result, I'd leave it for more advanced courses than the one I taught.
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