Nine Lives

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents Nine Lives by William Dalrymple, read by Mikhail Sen.

LONGLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE

‘Beautifully written, ridiculously erudite, warm and open-hearted’ The Times
‘Compelling and poignant’ Guardian
‘This is travel writing at its best’ Observer
Internationally bestselling William Dalrymple takes us to the heart of an undiscovered India.

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 herself to death.

Nine people, nine lives; each one taking a different religious path, each one an unforgettable story. William Dalrymple delves deep into the heart of a nation torn between the relentless onslaught of modernity and the ancient traditions that endure to this day.

Critics Review

His most ambitious yet, taking the reader into lurid, scarcely imaginable worlds of mysticism . . . Dalrymple has an inimitable way of conjuring the Indian landscape
Financial Times
Beautifully written, ridiculously erudite, warm and open-hearted . . . A towering talent
The Times
A blend of travelogue, ethnography, oral history and reportage, Nine Lives is compelling and poignant
Guardian
The reader gets the sense that the author is driven by an unquenchable curiosity about a country he loves. Dalrymple never mocks his subjects. Indeed, his prose is often tinged with tenderness and a sense of longing. In dashes of brilliance, Dalrymple’s work reveals an India still rich in religious experience, its spiritual quest – or rather, quests – still very much part of the warp and weft of daily life. Amid all the excitement about economic growth, an older India endures
Wall Street Journal
At its best travel writing beats fiction, firing the imagination with tales of foreign peoples drawn close by our common humanity . . . This is travel writing at its best. I hope it sparks a revival
Observer
Nine Lives remains oddly gripping, and often very moving, in its first-person accounts of spiritually-minded people that Dalrymple meets on his travels across the subcontinent
The National
For those who enjoyed Dalrymple’s earlier travel adventures, this latest book is written with the same verve and sense of immediacy . . . In a deft way he shows how the tensions, dilemmas and changes in the lives of these individuals illustrate the vast transformation of Indian society . . . Vibrant and engaging, Dalrymple paints a compelling portrait of this complex sprawling giant of a country at a time of momentous change
The Australian
His characteristic wit and sympathy are fully evident in the interviews he has conducted . . . Beautifully illustrates the relationship between tradition and modernity in India
Spectator
A fascinating text . . . It is an index of Dalrymple’s ability as a writer and his complex immersion in Indian cultures that he deftly avoids any hint of “Orientalism” . . . Dalrymple succeeds in juxtaposing the sacred and the secular without diverting the captivating flow of his prose. This is a rich book, teeming with fascinating characters and places worth visiting; it is a travel book that takes the reader not only across the wide expanse of the Indian subcontinent but also into intriguing aspects of India’s past and present
Tabish Khair
Dalrymple’s storytelling skills and eye for the bizarre make this a fascinating and entertaining window onto spiritual India
Sunday Times, Books of the Year
A travel writer of huge talent, even genius
Outlook
A fast-paced book, moving from the perspective of a Jain nun contemplating the slow and voluntary relinquishing of her life, to the dilemma of the Dalit theyyam who shuttles between his job as a prison warden to his life as a man in the grip of religious ecstasy. These are compelling contemporary stories, and Dalrymple seems to be channelling a modern-day avatar of Kipling
Business Standard
In Nine Lives the author is on the road again, but deliberately takes a back seat, allowing his characters to tell their own spellbinding stories. Dalrymple’s exhaustive research and deep feeling for Indian culture and ancient faiths mean he writes with clarity, erudition and engagement. With his guidance and context, each story reads like a rare insight into a multifarious and often impenetrable culture. Nine Lives is India at its most pure but also its most fragile. Dalrymple’s stories always strive for a higher purpose than simply recounting adventures in the manner of so much contemporary travel writing. In Nine Lives, that purpose is to record and conserve these unique, fantastical histories, before they disappear forever
Sydney Morning Herald
Dalrymple is widely read and admired, and Nine Lives is both moving and radiant: an austere, piercing, and exciting book on nine astonishing religious lives
The Hindu

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