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Item Details
Title:
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NINE LIVES
IN SEARCH OF THE SACRED IN MODERN INDIA |
By: |
William Dalrymple |
Format: |
Hardback |
List price:
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£20.00 |
We believe that this item is permanently unavailable, and so we cannot source
it.
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ISBN 10: |
1408800616 |
ISBN 13: |
9781408800614 |
Publisher: |
BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING PLC |
Pub. date: |
5 October, 2009 |
Pages: |
304 |
Description: |
A completely original, informed, well-crafted and beautifully written book about Modern India. |
Synopsis: |
A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet - then spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the violence by hand printing the best prayer flags in India. A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve to death. A woman leaves her middle-class family in Calcutta, and her job in a jute factory, only to find unexpected love and fulfilment living as a Tantric skull feeder in a remote cremation ground. A prison warden from Kerala becomes, for two months of the year, a temple dancer and is worshipped as a deity; then, at the end of February each year, he returns to prison. An illiterate goat herd from Rajasthan keeps alive an ancient 4,000-line sacred epic that he, virtually alone, still knows by heart. A devadasi - or temple prostitute - initially resists her own initiation into sex work, yet pushes both her daughters into a trade she now regards as a sacred calling. Nine people, nine lives. Each one taking a different religious path, each one an unforgettable story.Exquisite and mesmerising, and told with an almost biblical simplicity, William Dalrymple's first travel book in over a decade explores how traditional forms of religious life in South Asia have been transformed in the region's rapid change. A distillation of twenty-five years of exploring India and writing about its religious traditions, Nine Lives is a modern Indian Canterbury Tales. |
Illustrations: |
B&W Inserts |
Publication: |
UK |
Imprint: |
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
Returns: |
Returnable |
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Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr
A celebratory, inclusive and educational exploration of Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr for both children that celebrate and children who want to understand and appreciate their peers who do.
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