This personal essay tells the story of the discovery of reading. It uses A. K. Ramanujan’s short story “Annayya’s Anthropology” and other Indian fiction to discuss books from India and Pakistan as commodities exchanged for wheat from the U.S. under the PL 480 library program.

This essay uses the personal account of a search for sexual experience as a backdrop to introduce an interview with the British-Asian writer Hanif Kureishi. Also contrasted with Kureishi’s work are other writings set in India—E. M. Forster to Upamanyu Chatterjee—but what distinguishes Kureishi is his response to a contemporary challenge, fundamentalist puritanism.

A brief...