Goddess in the Stones: Travels in India

by NormanLewis (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1991

  $4.63

  The last volume of the trilogy on the Southern sub-continent, following A Dragon Apparent and Golden Earth . It was Norman's belief that much of the old India described by early travellers remained to be re-discovered off the beaten track, and accordingly he undertook a journey of 2,500 miles in search of this. His travels begin, far from the tourist itinerary, in the feudal state of Bihar, currently the scene of a brutal case war in which untouchables attempting to defend their newly-won rights are massacred by higher caste gangs. From these violent happenings Lewis takes refuge in the mountains of the East, investigating the extraordinary customs of some of the 3 million bow-and-arrow tribal peoples who have survived in isolation here defending a seductive life-style. The India Norman Lewis describes is lonely, beautiful and unspoilt.

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $4.27

  'The great virtue of Norman Lewis as a writer is that he can make the most boring things interesting; whatever he is describing - whether it is a rickshaw driver, an alcohol-crazed elephant, or a man defecating by the side of the road - Lewis's senses are awake for sounds or smells, and he can make you think twice about scenes you have seen ten thousand times before. He has a good eye for the odd, the weird and the curious, and the book is full of some of the strangest facts imaginable: the tribe which marries ten-year-old boys to thirty-year-old women; the method of training a sloth bear to dance; the market where you can buy herbal remedies to hasten your enemy's menopause or procure the growth of a serpent in her intestines; philtres to spread or extinguish the fires of love; a sap which, painted on the skin, ensures invisibility against tigers...a joy to read' William Dalrymple, Spectator 'A marvellous travel book' Independent 'The best travel writer of our age, if not since Marco Polo' Auberon Waugh