Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

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Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

From the author of The Last Mughal (â€œA compulsively readable masterpieceâ€ â€”The New York Review of Books), an exquisite, mesmerizing book that illuminates the remarkable ways in which traditional forms of religious life in India have been transformed in the vortex of the regionâ€™s rapid changeâ€”a book that distills the authorâ€™s twenty-five years of travel in India, taking us deep into ways of life that we might otherwise never have known exist.

A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibetâ€”and spends the rest of his life atoning for the violence by hand printing the finest prayer flags in India . . . A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her closest friend ritually starve herself to death . . . A woman leaves her middle-class life in Calcutta and finds unexpected fulfillment living as a Tantric in an isolated, skull-filled cremation ground . . . A prison warder from Kerala is worshipped as an incarnate deity for three months of every year . . . An idol carver, the twenty-third in a long line of sculptors, must reconcile himself to his sonâ€™s desire to study computer engineering . . . An illiterate goatherd from Rajasthan keeps alive in his memory an ancient four-thousand-stanza sacred epic . . . A temple prostitute, who initially resisted her own initiation into sex work, pushes both her daughters into a trade she nonetheless regards as a sacred calling.

William Dalrymple chronicles these lives with expansive insight and a spellbinding evocation of circumstance. And while the stories reveal the vigorous resilience of individuals in the face of the relentless onslaught of modernity, they reveal as well the continuity of ancient traditions that endure to this day. A dazzling travelogue of both place and spirit.

Country	USA
Author	William Dalrymple
Binding	Kindle Edition
EISBN	9780307593597
Format	Kindle eBook
Label	Vintage
Manufacturer	Vintage
NumberOfPages	281
PublicationDate	2010-06-09
Publisher	Vintage
ReleaseDate	2010-06-15
Studio	Vintage

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

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