Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
From the Dust Jacket: 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 fulfillment 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 an incarnate 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 mesmerizing, 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 vortex of 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.
Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
Previews available in: English
Showing 1 featured edition. View all 1 editions?
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1
Nine lives: in search of the sacred in modern India
2009, Bloomsbury
in English
1408800616 9781408800614
|
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
Table of Contents
Edition Notes
Includes index.
Classifications
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?History
- Created April 18, 2012
- 8 revisions
Wikipedia citation
×CloseCopy and paste this code into your Wikipedia page. Need help?
July 17, 2023 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
July 17, 2023 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
January 1, 2023 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
March 27, 2021 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
April 18, 2012 | Created by LC Bot | Imported from Library of Congress MARC record |