The following pieces have appeared previously in print, sometimes in a slightly different form, as noted. An excerpt from "The Town by the Sea" was published in the New York Times on January 14, 2005. Parts of "Imperial Temptations" were published in The Nation on May 9, 2002, and The New Yorker on April 7, 2003 (as "The Anglophone Empire"). "September 11," "Countdown," "At Large in Burma," and "The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi" were published in The New Yorker (September 24, 2001; October 26, 1998; August 12, 1996; and July 17, 1995, respectively). Excerpts from "'The Ghat of the Only World'" were published in The Nation on February 11, 2002. "The March of the Novel Through History" was published in Kunapipi: A Journal of Post-Colonial Writing (vol. 19) and in the Kenyon Review (vol. 20, no. 2, 1998). "The Fundamentalist Challenge" was published in the Wilson Quarterly in 1995. "Petrofiction" and "The Human Comedy in Cairo" were published in the New Republic (March 2, 1992, and May 7, 1990, respectively). "Dancing in Cambodia" (in shorter form), "An Egyptian in Baghdad," and "Four Corners" were published in Granta (no. 44, 1993; no. 34, 1990; no. 26, 1989, respectively). "Tibetan Dinner" was published in Granta (no. 25, 1988) and reprinted in the Utne Reader (March 1, 1992). "The Imam and the Indian" was published in Granta (no. 20, 1986) and reprinted in The Best of Granta Travel (London: Granta Books, 1991) and in Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question, ed. Angelika Bammer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).
The author is grateful for permission to print excerpts from the following works:
Agha Shahid Ali, "A Lost Memory of Delhi," from The Half-Inch Himalayas, copyright © 1987 by Agha Shahid Ali. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Agha Shahid Ali, "The Country Without a Post Office" and "Farewell," from The Country Without a Post Office, by Agha Shahid Ali. Copyright © 1997 by Agha Shahid Ali. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Agha Shahid Ali, "Lenox Hill," "The Last Saffron," "Summers of Translation," and "I Dream I Am at the Ghat of the Only World," from Rooms Are Never Finished, by Agha Shahid Ali. Copyright © 2002 by Agha Shahid Ali. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Michael Ondaatje, "Wells" and "The Story," from Handwriting, by Michael Ondaatje. Copyright © 1998 by Michael Ondaatje. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.