Memory, history and spirit of truth in ‘The Sense of an Ending’ and ‘Nehru and the Spirit of India’

Though they originate from very different literary and political contexts, the seminal works of Julian Barnes and Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee converge on the themes of memory, truth and accountability. While Barnes, in his novella The Sense of an Ending (2011), explores personal memory and its unreliability through its protagonist, Tony Webster, Bhattacharjee in Nehru and the Spirit of India (2022) seeks to understand India’s collective memory by revisiting the life and work of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. Both works iterate a profound truth: whether in personal life or in a nation’s historical consciousness, memory is laden with distortions, omissions and contests of meaning.

In The Sense of an Ending, Tony Webster reflects on his youth – his friendship with Adrian Finn and a failed relationship with his college sweetheart, Veronica – while confronting the unreliability of the human mind in its subjectivity of personal history. Years later, when a bequest reveals unsettling truths about Adrian’s suicide and his own role in it, he is compelled to revisit his past. Through interactions with an older Veronica and fragments of Adrian’s diary, Tony is forced to reconcile his selective memories with a harsher reality.

In Nehru and the Spirit of India, Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee, through Nehru’s writings and speeches, presents him as a leader…

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