A person with proven literary credentials who is an activist creates an intriguing link between the personal and the political to make for an alternative history to provide insights into several literary movements, social campaigns, political agitation, and power-retaining manoeuvrings that challenge dominant and acceptable readings across historical periods. It is what an engaging, detailed and occasionally banal autobiography of a celebrated author, social thinker and political activist Prem Kumar Mani does with felicity. Prem Kumar Mani, whose expulsion from the Bihar Legislative Council and the Janata Dal United (2011) created a furore in the country, curiously entered political activism first and developed into a fiction writer later (p. 110).
Mani’s autobiography insightfully spells out traits of the politicians and authors and points out, ‘There are some writers whose subconscious is filled with politics and when they actively pursue literature, they juxtapose organization, leadership, slogan and agitation with creative writings and Kamleshwar belonged to this category, contrarily there are some people who engage themselves in politics with unconscious literary sensibility: Nehru, Narender Dev and Jaiprakash Narayan affirmed it’ (pp. 116-117).