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During a trip to India, retiree Annie and her friend Leila hire Amarnath as their driver in Rajasthan. Having fallen in love with India's colours, aromas, sights, sounds, and people, the friends return for another vacation. This time, Annie's and Amarnath's lives become linked in unexpected ways. Annie travels to India many more times and acquaints herself with the unknown, exotic culture in the circle of Amarnath's family and clan. She chances upon the most unusual adventures - unusual for a western, middle-class woman. The novel is, in equal measure, a testimony to love and a fascinating evocation of Indian culture, seen through Annie's eyes. It brilliantly captures love's triumph over inevitable culture clashes, embedded in narratives about Rajasthan's architecture, legends, art, festivals, and ordinary family life.
You are invited to "Dancing Along the Needle’s Thread" with Ellen as she sews the fabric of her life together with a rich array of colourful strands. Inspired by her desire for learning and self-understanding, she weaves a personal tapestry with her mother's harrowing story during wartime Germany and her own challenges and triumphs experienced as a middle-age mother diving into university education in Canada. Leaping forward with insights from her doctoral thesis, Ellen creates another "Gesamtkunstwerk"— a work encompassing a diversity of art forms— to explore the nature of Self. Drawing on dance, drama, mythology, art, poetry, literature, and journals, she rediscovers the joy of expre...
‘There is a term for me in almost every Indian language. I am reviled and revered, deemed to have been blessed, and cursed, with sacred powers.’ In the swollen and crumbling red-light district of Kamathipura, at the heart of Bombay, Madhu is given a difficult and potentially lucrative task by her housemother — to prepare a newly arrived ‘parcel’ for its opening. Madhu’s home is Hijra House, one of the last bastions in the land war slowly consuming the area, as property developers vie for land, desperate to make way for their empty grey monoliths. It is here that ‘hijras’ — eunuchs, people of the third sex, 'neither here nor there’ — ply their trade. Now forty and with h...
Understan is a reflective journey through what lies below the surface of a man's life. Crossing continents in space and decades in time, it uses memory and the minutiae of daily life to unravel the experiences of love and death. It examines belief and superstition, does not hesitate to pray, and takes delight in the sight of elders, lovers, and children. In Understan, the poet is lost but holds the map to everywhere.
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Two bestselling authors combine their strengths in a travelogue, a search for roots, a romance — and a seat-of-your-pants adventure. One sunny day in 2006, Julie and Colin Angus were talking about the future, as newly engaged couples do. More unusually, they were at the time travelling together from Moscow to Vancouver by human power — boat, bike, and foot. That day, they were examining a road atlas and in particular the labyrinth of European inland waterways it revealed. Julie traced a route of interconnected canals, rivers, and coastlines that led from Colin’s parents’ homeland of Scotland past her mother’s homeland, Germany, and on to her father’s, Syria. She said, half-seriou...