Since post-colonialism came into vogue in the study of South Asia in the early 1980s, scholars have been writing about the tensions between fluid South Asian identities and the essentializing categories imposed by Europeans during the colonial era. But rarely have these tensions been so well illustrated as they are in Michael Fisher's eminently readable biography of David Ochterloney Dyce Sombre, a man whose multifaceted identity the book's subtitle only partly describes.
A better description is the well-chosen adverb Fisher uses to describe his subject's life. More than simply strange, Dyce Sombre's life was “inordinately“ so, and in almost every sense of the word. Writing at times with an affection for Dyce Sombre that the reader cannot help sharing, Fisher shows us a man whose life was inordinate in that his behavior was often intemperate and excessive, habitually overindulging in food, sex, and gambling and spending prodigally. It was inordinate...
