Interesting Book Recommendation

[Guest guest]

>From the Toronto Globe and Mail's "Great Summer Travel Reads"

suggestions:

 

A GODDESS IN THE STONES

By Norman Lewis (Henry Holt)

 

Graham Greene once called Norman Lewis "one of our best writers, not

of any particular decade but of our [20th] century," and British

writer Cyril Connolly claimed that Lewis could write about the back

of a bus and make it interesting.

 

As well as authoring more than a dozen works of fiction, Lewis wrote

a handful of superb travel books. Among the best is "A Goddess In The

Stones", a chronicle of his 1990 journey through some of the poorest

areas of eastern India, where he believed remnants of the tribal

world remained to be rediscovered.

 

His travels begin in the feudal state of Bihar, and move into the

mountainous regions where about three million primitive tribal people

still manage to survive with their ancient traditions. After a stop

in Calcutta, Lewis continues his journey west and south through

Orissa and Bonda country where tribal groups marry 10-year-old boys

to 30-year-old women and where markets sell herbs to hasten an

enemy's menopause.

 

Much of what he saw and describes in "A Goddess in the Stones" is

disappearing under a flood of industrialization, pollution and

deforestation.

 

"India's jungles and all that they contain are to be swept away," he

writes. "It was a thought that increased my feelings of urgency in

writing this book."

 

Source:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/2003071

9/TRAVELREADS19/TPTravel/TopStories