Nostalgia and Global Reality
Aparna Rayaprol
Locating Home by Karen Isaksen Leonard Stanford University Press, 2007, 416 pp., $65.00
December 2007, volume 31, No 12

The book is a rich multi-site ethnography that spans continents, tracing histories and movements of people of Hyderabadi origin. The fieldwork was done over a period of ten years from 1990 to 2000 in Hyderabad, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, Canada, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Karen Leonard’s own emotional and intellectual bond with Hyderabad and its people is the driving force behind this research. Her self-reflexive journey from a young graduate student to one of the world’s best-known scholars of Hyderabad is an inspiration for young researchers. The book has a number of detailed maps and photos which provide a detailed tapestry of Hyderabad. The term Hyderabadi, according to Leonard, is an identity that linked one to the Deccani culture that went back to the Nizam of Hyderabad.

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