Amit Majmudar is a poet, novelist, and translator. His most recent book is Godsong: A Verse Translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, with Commentary (Knopf, 2018).
Nonfiction
May/June 2021
The Master and Emily
1 The daguerrotype we have is not of her. People always experience recordings of their voices as somehow not their own. But it wasn’t just the sixteen-year-old Emily who didn’t […]
Fiction
Mar/Apr 2016
Secret Lives of the Detainees
1. Ansar al-Banna Ansar al-Banna was the first prisoner to start screaming in his own cell, before anyone had touched him. His interviewers, for all their ingenuity, found themselves emptying […]
Drama
Winter 2014
God of the Tomcats
A Tragicomic Mystery Play I have seen the Wild White Women . . . — Euripides, The Bacchae, trans. Gilbert Murray Cast of Characters The Gods KRISHNA, dressed in rags, […]
Book Reviews
Fall 2012
George Steiner, Last of the Europeans
The Poetry of Thought: From Hellenism to Celan. By George Steiner. New York: New Directions, 2012.192 pp. $24.95, hardcover. We don’t have many examples of writers embarking on a […]
Fiction
Summer 2012
Excerpt from “Riven: A Novel”
One. Foreground. Everyone has someone. A child, a wife. Someone they must cup from the sun and carry to kinder soil. I have Papu. When he is awake, I hold […]
Nonfiction
Spring 2012
George Steiner and the Quest for Mystical Union
Literary criticism, in spite of the claims sometimes made for it, is opinion-sharing. The goal of criticism is not truth, though critics may tell themselves that; the goal of criticism […]
Poetry
Fall 2010
The Walter Reed Sonnets
1. Embers I wheel her out so she can paint her nails. “I always do this in the open air— I hate that sharp, nail-polish smell. I swear It’s worse than […]
Fiction
Summer 2010
Azazil
Editor’s Note: This is the final chapter of the novella Azazil, which first appeared in KR’s Fall 2009 issue. The previous sections appear in our online journal, KROnline. ∙∙ The […]
Fiction
Spring 2010
Azazil
Editor’s Note: Chapters one and two of Amit Majmudar’s novella Azazil appeared in KR‘s Fall 2009 issue. We have now republished that first section in its entirety in our online […]
Fiction
Fall 2009
Azazil
He [Azazil] was told: Bow down! He said, "I will bow to no other." He was asked, Even if you receive My curse? He said, "It does not matter. I […]
July/Aug 2018
Regeneration
for Robin Coste Lewis Neuroplasticity. The brain is finite. The mind can find its Newborn elasticity Inside its chambered Nautilus, hiding A spiral stair, A nacre lining. It was the […]
Jan/Feb 2017
Resurrection: His Hands
First thing he did was clap his hands against his eyes, as if he’d gouged them out with hairpins. Only this was someone else’s son, and sin. The hands appeared […]
Summer 2014
1914: The Name Game
Asquith had it from Haldane, Who had it from Poincaré, While Viviani’s tête-a-tête
The Kenyon Review Credos
A Definition of Terms
The Kenyon Review Credos I’ve tried to talk about literature without talking about my religion but I can’t. It feels like talking about my religion without talking about my religion. […]
Fall 2013
Steep Ascension
A last tercet reworked like a last will, he’d told me he was writing, feeling well, but I found his body turned to face the wall,
Spring 2012
The Servant of Two Masters
Reflections on the Poem and the Novel
The poem makes the self strange. The novel makes strangers familiar.
Both the poem and the novel are tasked with rendering their subjects at once larger-than-life and lifelike. The poem begins with the larger-than-life and narrows it. The novel begins with the lifelike and expands it.
Fall 2009
Azazil
He [Azazil] was told: Bow down! He said, “I will bow to no other.” He was asked, Even if you receive My curse? He said, “It does not matter. I […]
Summer 2011
Kepler’s Snowflake
The Six-Cornered Snowflake. By Johannes Kepler (Author), Jacques Bromberg (Translator), and Guillermo Bleichmar (Foreword). Paul Dry Books: Philadelphia, PA, 2011. 115 pages. $12.00. Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) wrote some of the […]
Amit Majmudar
Amit Majmudar has published fiction in The Kenyon Review and poetry in the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly. His first novel, Partitions, was published in 2011. He is also the […]