Home in the World: A Memoir

Overview
Amartya Sen offers a reflective, candid account of a life lived between cultures, disciplines, and public responsibilities. The narrative moves fluidly between personal memories and sustained reflections on ideas, tracing how formative experiences in Bengal shaped a lifelong engagement with questions of justice, democracy, and human flourishing. Episodes from family life, academic apprenticeship, and public interventions are woven into a portrait of an intellectual who refuses the separation of thought from lived reality.

Early years and family
Sen evokes the rhythms of his childhood against the social and cultural richness of Bengal, portraying a household where literature, music, and conversation were central. Family ties and the moral seriousness of everyday life emerge as crucial influences on his sensibility, shaping an openness to plural perspectives and a deep respect for educational and cultural traditions. Memories of schools, teachers, and early friendships are presented not as mere background but as the soil from which later commitments grew.

Academic formation and influences
The account follows an arc from regional classrooms to broader intellectual circles, describing how encounters with teachers, peers, and foundational texts shaped an evolving framework for inquiry. Economists, philosophers, and literary figures feature as interlocutors in a developing worldview that prizes ethical clarity and empirical sensitivity. The narrative emphasizes the gradual synthesis of analytical tools and normative concerns that would underpin a career spanning welfare economics, social choice theory, and development studies.

Identity, exile, and belonging
Questions of identity and belonging are central, treated with sensitivity and nuance rather than polemic. The experience of moving between places and cultures is presented as both loss and enrichment: exile in the literal or metaphorical sense becomes a source of perspective, allowing a comparative stance toward social justice and political institutions. Reflections on language, memory, and home reveal an abiding commitment to pluralism and an insistence that belonging need not require erasure of difference.

Engagement with ideas and public life
Intellectual concerns are continually linked to matters of public importance. Sen recounts involvement in debates over famine, poverty, education, and democracy, showing how theoretical work informed practical interventions and vice versa. The narrative underscores an ethic of responsibility: scholarship as a form of civic engagement and argument as a tool for policy and human betterment. Personal anecdotes about mentors, colleagues, and public controversies illustrate how ideas travel into public discourse and policy.

Style and reflections on legacy
The prose combines clarity, modest humor, and philosophical seriousness, balancing anecdote with reflective analysis. The book resists self-aggrandizement, favoring instead a patient account of influences, mistakes, and learning. The closing reflections gesture toward continuity rather than closure, suggesting that inquiry, friendship, and public concern remain ongoing commitments. The portrait that emerges is of an intellectual who bridges traditions and disciplines while remaining deeply attuned to human lives and institutional realities.