India, April 11 -- Amitava Kumar's The Green Book: An Observer's Notebook is the third in the series after The Blue Book: A Writer's Journal and The Yellow Book: A Traveller's Diary. In spirit, it is all three - a writer's journal, a traveller's diary and an observer's notebook. There are ruminations on writing and the 'process', notes on Gaza, journeys along the Ganga, and reflections on the darkness that lies within. The book is divided into different sections but is thematically fluid.

Kumar begins by framing his Notebook in the tradition of the journals of the Bronte sisters, Henry David Thoreau, Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac and Annie Proulx. One may think that it will probably lean into the Euro-American literary tradition only, e...