William Elison is Senior Lecturer in Religion, Anthropology, and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College. Christian Lee Novetzke is Associate Professor of International Studies at the University of Washington. Andy Rotman is Professor of Religion at Smith College.
Among the most in-depth books you’ll read about a single Hindi
film…Here is a scholarly work about a popular film that also tries
to mimic something of the film’s controlled lunacy, winking at
itself every now and again.
*The Hindu*
We have in our hands is a book that is as daring and inventive, as
zany and counterintuitive as the film itself that it is about. If
one of the prime pleasures of the Desai film was its absolutely
no-holds-barred trip through the gullis of Bollywood masala cinema,
then the book lives up to that spirit of adventurous derring-do…
The book roots its playful speculative swing in robust
interpretations of the film through first-rate scholarship in Indic
religions. The web of erudition is woven through with a light touch
making it a book for one and all, lay and specialist alike.
*The Wire*
One of my most stimulating reads of the last year…[It] is scholarly
and playful at the same time, which is a very rare thing.
*Forbes India*
It brilliantly manages to pull off a magical feat in film writing
of this kind. It digs deep into and elaborates upon the film text
from various sociopolitical angles, critical perspectives and film
theoretical, anthropological and ethnographical discourses. Most
importantly, it is an eminently readable book that will delight any
cineaste for its sheer passion for cinema and for the delightful
theoretical dexterity with which it weaves a complex and rich web
of information and analysis.
*Frontline*
Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation should
please both long-time Bollywood enthusiasts and those who are
encountering Hindi cinema for the first time…Delightful and
adventurous.
*Journal of Religion & Film*
In an analysis that is nearly as much fun to read as the film is to
watch, Elison, Novetzke and Rotman reveal a film rich in cultural
metaphor, sophisticated in its use of parody, and weighty beneath
its seemingly featherbrained revelry…Like the film it investigates,
the book Amar Akbar Anthony delivers insight and fun in equal
measure. It is monumental accomplishment that should be widely
read.
*Reading Religion*
Sprinkled with humor, this well-written book is an excellent
scholarly account of a film that became a critical part of the
Bollywood canon…[A] blockbuster.
*Religious Studies Review*
Like the blockbuster from which it borrows its vitality, Amar Akbar
Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation uses a cocktail of
humor and irony, magic and just a touch of madness to analyze one
of the major blockbusters of Hindi cinema. Elison, Novetzke, and
Rotman have produced a version of fan writing that fans will
actually want to read. In light, sparkling prose, they bring
formidable interdisciplinary gifts to remind us what made Manmohan
Desai’s film the legend it is, and why it continues to matter now
more than ever.
*Priya Joshi, author of Bollywood’s India: A Public
Fantasy*
A brilliant, rollicking read. Grounded in authoritative scholarship
on South Asian religion and society, this extended analysis of—and
riff on—one of Bombay cinema’s all-time classics is as playful and
enjoyable as the madcap capers of the film itself.
*Rosie Thomas, author of Bombay before Bollywood: Film City
Fantasies*
Lively and highly readable and, like the film itself, quite a zany
offering—this book does something new with the film, in that its
close readings spin out into a broad study of Indian culture, and
religion in particular.
*Rachel Dwyer, Professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema, SOAS,
University of London*
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