India: A Literary Companion

Bruce Palling

ISBN 10: 0719551838 / ISBN 13: 9780719551833

Published by Hodder & Stoughton General Division, United Kingdom, London, 1992

About this Item

"How can the mind take hold of such a country?" asked E.M. Forster in "A Passage to India". How indeed? For the past 2500 years conquerors, travellers, traders, missionaries and artists have left records of their encounters with the subcontinent - bewitched, bemused, amused, dismayed - and this book is culled from the best of them. The first accounts which reached Greece spoke of giant animals which could detect gold with their snouts and of women who would give themselves to any man in exchange for an elephant. As Indian culture slowly evolved, it inspired a glorious profusion of comment, observation and misapprehension, encompassing the sublime and the ridiculous in almost equal measure. Many of the authors quoted here, such as Naipaul, Kipling, Chaudhuri and Forster, will be familiar to lovers of literature, but the real joys are often to be found in material rarely seen before - in the unpublished diaries of colonial housewives, the letters of French botanists, and the reflections of returning exiles. India is overwhelming in its beauty, its melancholy, its sheer richness and diversity; no other culture can offer such a range of experience. The book has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine.

Seller Inventory # GOR003097668

Bibliographic Details

• Title: India: A Literary Companion
• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton General Division, United Kingdom, London
• Publication Date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719551838
• ISBN 13: 9780719551833
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 363 grams

About this title

Synopsis

"How can the mind take hold of such a country?" asked E.M. Forster in "A Passage to India". How indeed? For the past 2500 years conquerors, travellers, traders, missionaries and artists have left records of their encounters with the subcontinent - bewitched, bemused, amused, dismayed - and this book is culled from the best of them. The first accounts which reached Greece spoke of giant animals which could detect gold with their snouts and of women who would give themselves to any man in exchange for an elephant. As Indian culture slowly evolved, it inspired a glorious profusion of comment, observation and misapprehension, encompassing the sublime and the ridiculous in almost equal measure. Many of the authors quoted here, such as Naipaul, Kipling, Chaudhuri and Forster, will be familiar to lovers of literature, but the real joys are often to be found in material rarely seen before - in the unpublished diaries of colonial housewives, the letters of French botanists, and the reflections of returning exiles. India is overwhelming in its beauty, its melancholy, its sheer richness and diversity; no other culture can offer such a range of experience.