Description
This book is an autobiography in which the author Hoshang Merchant talks about his life through a series of vignettes. In the Man Who Would be Queen: Autobiographical Fictions, the author starts by talking about his childhood and growing up in a rich family in Mumbai. His family had issues and was extremely dysfunctional, and this affected him to a great extent.
His father had no love or affection for his kids or wife, and the author’s mother struggled to hold the family together. His sisters never agreed to or accepted Hoshang’s decisions and choices in life.
Hoshang finished his education in the US and Germany and travelled widely through West Asia for work and pleasure. His travel escapades, which started as early as his student life, resulted in numerous episodes because of his sexual orientation, and there were also several eventful incidents that led to his growth as a writer and poet in the initial part of the book, the author talks about his series of lovers and the sexual experiences that he had, along with a string of family clashes that occurred.
Hoshang talks about his encounters with gay and bisexual men and how he was the most hurt and betrayed since none of them had the courage to come out and live their lives hiding their sexuality. He talks about all his sexual experiences, some of which involved love and affection, but some did not. A few of his relationships lasted just a few months or years, while most did not. He also briefly talks about his love for a fellow student named Nablus, which was an episode that didn’t end well.
ISBN 978-0143064862
Hoshang Merchant is India’s pre-eminent voice of gay liberation. Born in 1947 to a Zoroastrian business family in Bombay, India, he graduated in 1968 with a major in English and a minor in the culture of India. On his mother’s side, he descends from a line of preachers and teachers.
Hoshang holds a master’s from Occidental College, Los Angeles, USA. At Purdue University, Indiana, USA, he specialized in the renaissance and modernism. After leaving Purdue in 1975, Merchant attended the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Centre, Massachusetts, USA, and lived and taught in Heidelberg, Iran, and Jerusalem, where he was exposed to various radical student movements of the Left.
He has studied Buddhism at the Tibetan Library, Dharamshala, India, and Islam in Iran and Palestine. Since 1979, seventeen of his books of poetry have been published. He recently retired from the University of Hyderabad, India, after twenty-six years of teaching.
