“Suvir Kaul’s impressive volume, bringing poems and photographs along with interpretative essays on the politics and history of Kashmir, tells us what has gone wrong (and is still going wrong) in Kashmir and how the security concerns of the state take precedence over the daily suffering and trauma of ordinary people. . . . Kaul’s text is dramatically highlighted as we witness firsthand this human tragedy through the poems and photographs of this magnificent book.” — Reeta C. Tremblay, Pacific Affairs
"A comprehensive analysis that forces open the layered history of the region. . . . A book of clear insights. . . . Kaul has navigated the etic and emic spaces with the ease of a committed global scholar and citizen, and the empathy of a Kashmiri man who shares his blood and bones with the Kashmiri people and the land he is writing about. For scholars and lay readers alike, this book exemplifies how a critically-engaged yet humane analysis is nurtured and executed to shine a much-needed light on the complicated political fate of the Kashmiris using their own voices." — Ather Zia, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
"An eloquent appeal to the reader to understand the everyday experience of those who live in militarised Kashmir. . . . An important book that neither sentimentalises the suffering of Kashmir’s people, nor offers an abstracted analysis of their political predicament. The interweaving of essay, poetry and photography makes for a richer understanding of the ways in which global events impact on both region and on the individual within it." — Cathy Turner, Postcolonial Studies
"This book on Kashmir offers something significant as somebody has for the first time collected Kashmiri writings written under the siege." — Kashmir Times
"The combination of Suvir Kaul's essays, Kashmiri poetry, and Javed Dar's images leaves one breathless and amazed at the treasures to be found and sorrowful and outraged at the experiences to be witnessed here. Of Gardens and Graves is a completely affective geopolitical history delivered to us with authority and love." — Antoinette Burton, author of Africa in the Indian Imagination: Race and the Politics of Postcolonial Citation
"Reading Of Gardens and Graves is a treat beyond description. I have visited Kashmir several times during the period this book covers, and while reading it I felt magically transported into the invisible heart and soul of a world where much of what Suvir Kaul described had been only vaguely visible to me before. The work he has done here is brave and powerful." — David Ludden, Professor of History, New York University
"Of Gardens and Graves offers a new and necessary approach to political violence. Combining lucid historical, political, and literary analysis with stunning photographs by Javed Dar and a bilingual archive of Kashmiri poetry, Suvir Kaul’s book reveals how collective trauma permeates social life—but also how artists and writers have responded creatively to catastrophe. Intensely focused on the conflict in Kashmir, Kaul nevertheless opens up questions of global concern." — Michael Rothberg, author of Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization