'A brilliant compilation ... Essential reading.' ---William Dalrymple 'A string of gems' --- Maria Aurora Couto 'Insightful, witty, uplifting' --- Eberhard Fischer B.N. Goswamy, one of the most eminent art historians of our times, opens a window to a wide range of subjects: all on or around the arts, which have immense potential to form aesthetic sensibility. From Ananda Coomaraswamy to the Art of Calligraphy, The Meaning of Silence to Farid-ud-din Attar's great Sufi parable of the Conference of the Birds, among others, Goswamy invites the general, but generally interested and literate, readers to enter, through these pieces, the field of the arts and savor its pleasures: to take from them what they can, learn something fresh--or view with freshness -- and expand their minds. Definitive, engaging, and comprehensive, Conversations promises to be a truly accessible primer on art in India and South Asia.