SOURCE: “Looking for Bomma,” in London Review of Books, Vol. 6, No. 6, March 24, 1994, pp. 26–27.

In the following review of In an Antique Land, Clifford explores the differences in religious tolerance, cultural exchange, and political attitudes between the Indian and Arabic societies of the twelfth century and the twentieth century.

In his novel, The Shadow Lines, Amitav Ghosh writes of an Indian family whose members cross and recross two geopolitical borders. One border joins and divides Calcutta and London, the other Calcutta and Dhaka. Toward the end of the book the narrator's failing grandmother prepares for a return visit to the city she left, years before, when India was partitioned: Dhaka, East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. It is only a short flight from Calcutta. The old woman asks whether she will see the border from the plane. Her son tells her that it won't look like a map, with different colours...