Tamil a biography

Review

[A] playful and supple 'biography' of Tamil language and poetics.--Thomas Meaney "London Review of Books" (1/31/2017 12:00:00 AM)

[Shulman] offers a comprehensive examination of the history and culture of Tamil, a language spoken by more than 80 million people.--B.

Tavakolian "Choice" (3/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)

David Shulman, in his Tamil: A Biography, [writes] with élan, with unaffected erudition and an infectious charm that leaves the reader breathless and, at times, puzzled at how endearing the evolution of a language could turn out to be.

There is no doubt that Shulman, the foremost Indologist from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is uniquely qualified to do this job given a lifetime of scholarship on south Indian literature and culture. His love for his subject comes alive on every page of the book, and yet this is not a stormy, tortured relationship; instead there is refinement and nuance, things not often seen in language discourse in India...Tamil: A Biography is a