About Book
Nadia Cattoni is a literary historian and Assistant Professor of South Asian Studies at the University
of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her research focuses on Classical Hindi literature, with particular
emphasis on court poetry and aesthetic theory, and on processes of circulation, intertextuality,
and transformation across linguistic and cultural contexts. Adopting an intermedial approach,
she examines the relationships between literary production and visual traditions, as well as the social
and historical frameworks of patronage and performance that shape vernacular literary cultures.
Her work also engages with women’s history in South Asia, particularly in relation to courtly
cultures and knowledge production, and explores the entangled histories of India and Europe.
She is the author of a monograph, Dev, l’artisan-poète du 18ème siècle et la nayika dans le
Rasavilasa: circulation et échanges, intertextualité et transformations (2020), and two co-edited
volumes, Early Modern India: Literatures and Images, Texts and Languages (2019) and Significant
Others, Significant Encounters: Essays on South Asian History and Literature (2023)
.
This volume explores the untold story of the relationship between the Swiss artist, scholar, and art
collector Alice Boner and P. K. Mittra, a Bengali lawyer, whom she met after settling in Varanasi
in the mid-1930s. Drawing on a rich and varied body of sources—including their forty-year
correspondence, photographs, and Boner’s drawings—it reconstructs their intimate relationship
and entangled lives. While identifying the roles they played in each other’s lives, the volume also
foregrounds their individuality. It traces Mittra’s personal world, reconstructing aspects of his
personality, family life, and social networks, as well as his involvement in Boner’s professional
activities in India. In addition, it examines how Boner’s understanding of India was shaped by and
mediated through her relationship with Mittra. By bringing together textual and visual materials,
the book offers a nuanced portrait of their bond and sheds new light on the affective and cultural
dynamics of intercultural encounters in late colonial and early postcolonial India.