The Stolen Light (Continents of Exile) - Hardcover

Mehta, a New Yorker writer, presents the sixth volume in an autobiographical series, "Continents of Exile." It describes Mehta's undergraduate years at Pomona College in California and gives a unique perspective on America in the 1950s. This is a lyric narrative of an unusual, talented blind youth from India. He attempted to untangle contrary cultural forces, trying to be accepted without special considerations. As a student, he encountered not only the expected problems--cultural and ethnic--but also financial ones, when he set out to live the life of an ordinary American college student. He succeeded in experiencing fraternity life and dating in the sighted world. His vivid account of his college life makes for a delightful book that will appeal to a variety of readers.
- Samuel T. Huang, Northern Illinois Univ. Libs., DeKalb
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This sixth volume of Mehta's lively, affecting autobiography covers his experiences at Pomona College, Calif., in the 1950s, when, despite his blindness, he tried to carry on the normal life of an undergraduate: joining a fraternity, bicycling, owning and driving a car and dating some of the most attractive girls on campus. Containing extensive selections from the Indian writer's journal, this lyrical narrative describes the student's problems in finding people to read to him and sponsors to pay his expenses, the suicide of his closest friend and his father's puzzling relationship with a wealthy woman to whom he was "court physician." Toward the end, at Harvard, he completes his first book, Face to Face , and starts his literary career.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.