Home in the World

November 15, 2021
In this quietly captivating memoir, Nobel Prize–winning economist Sen (The Idea of Justice) traces the influences that fed into his groundbreaking applications of economic theory to alleviate poverty. He begins with his earliest memories as a young student in late 1930s India, recalling how his midwife grandmother’s talk about “unnecessarily high death rates” informed his later work researching maternal mortality, while his mother’s sympathies with Muslims who weren’t allowed to own land awakened his awareness of the role of class in sectarian strife. He also reminisces on his lifelong fascination with abstract reasoning and solutions for ending “earthy practical problems” like hunger, economic deprivations, and famines. Recalling the Bengal famine of 1943—a mass starvation that Sen was eyewitness to at age 10—he notes that even in the midst of millions of impoverished Bengalis dying, “the British public was kept amazingly uninformed.” Through passages animated by his piercing insights into the long history of inequality in India, Sen whisks readers from his college years in Calcutta and graduate studies at Cambridge to his later years lecturing on welfare economics around the globe. What emerges is a contemplative travelogue and a fascinating look into the singular consciousness of one of the world’s foremost thinkers. This is a galvanizing reflection on a roaming life. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.