Ayya's Accounts

Book excerpt: “An absorbing exploration of one man’s life” —as an orphan, refugee, shopkeeper, and grandfather—through a century of upheaval in India (Library Journal). Born in colonial India into a despised caste of former tree climbers, Ayya lost his mother as a child and came of age in a small town in lowland Burma. Forced to flee at the outbreak of World War II, he made a treacherous 1,700-mile journey by foot, boat, bullock cart, and rail back to southern India. Becoming a successful fruit merchant, Ayya educated and eventually settled many of his descendants in the United States. Luck, nerve, subterfuge, and sorrow all have their place along the precarious route of his advancement. Emerging out of tales told to his American grandson, Ayya’s Accounts embodies a simple faith—that the story of a place as large and complex as modern India can be told through the life of a single individual. “At once a mesmerizing memoir of an ordinary man’s life and an anthropologist’s revealing examination of the astounding changes experienced by persons and families . . . impossible to put down.” —South Asia “No one deemed a superhero by the movies has had a more interesting life with such extraordinary sweep.” —Scott Simon, NPR Weekend Edition