Un hogar en el mundo

For Amartya Sen, the word "home" evokes many places: the city of Dhaka, in present-day Bangladesh, where he grew up; the town of Santiniketan, where he was raised by his grandparents and his parents; Calcutta, where he began his studies in economics and actively participated in student movements; and Trinity College, Cambridge, which he reached at the age of nineteen. Sen brilliantly recreates the atmosphere of each of these places. At the center of his training was the intellectually liberating school in Santiniketan, founded by Rabindranath Tagore (who gave it his name, Amartya), and the exciting conversations at the famous Coffee House on College Street in Calcutta. As a university student at Cambridge, he related to many of the leading figures of the time. In a memorable chapter, he recalls the "rivers of Bengal" that he traveled with his parents between Dhaka and his ancestral villages. Furthermore, he masterfully conveys the political inflammation that led to hostility between Hindus and Muslims, as well as resistance to it. In 1943, Sen witnessed the Bengal famine and its disastrous outcome. Of course, the relationship between the UK and India is another main theme of the book. Forty-five years after he came to what is undoubtedly one of the largest intellectual foundations in the British country, Sen became a Master of Trinity College. This is a wonderful book of people and places, but also of ideas, which shaped a just, comprehensive and necessary worldview today.