Tag Archives: Non Fiction

In My Hands Today…

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The Age of Kali: Indian Travels & Encounters – William Dalrymple

The result of 10 year’s living and traveling throughout the Indian subcontinent, The Age of Kali emerges from Dalrymple’s uneasy sense that the region is slipping into the most fearsome of all epochs in ancient Hindu cosmology: “the Kali Yug, the Age of Kali, the lowest possible throw, an epoch of strife, corruption, darkness, and disintegration.” “The brilliance of this book lies in its refusal to reflect any cultural pessimism.

Dalrymple’s love for the subcontinent, and his feel for its diverse cultural identity, comes across in every page, which makes its chronicles of political corruption, ethnic violence, and social disintegration all the more poignant. The scope of the book is particularly impressive, from the vivid opening chapters portraying the lawless caste violence of Bihar, to interviews with the drug barons on the North-West Frontier, and Dalrymple’s extraordinary encounter with the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Some of the most fascinating sections of the book are Dalrymple’s interviews with Imran Khan and Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, which read like nonfiction companion pieces to Salman Rushdie’s bitterly satirical Shame. The Age of Kali is a dark, disturbing book that takes the pulse of a continent facing some tough questions

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To A Mountain in Tibet – Colin Thubron

Mount Kailas is the most sacred of the world’s mountains – holy to one-fifth of humanity. Isolated beyond the central Himalayas, its summit has never been scaled, but for centuries the mountain has been ritually circled by Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims. Colin Thubron joins these pilgrims, after an arduous trek from Nepal, through the high passes of Tibet, to the magical lakes beneath the slopes of Kailas itself. He talks to secluded villagers and to monks in their decaying monasteries; he tells the stories of exiles and of eccentric explorers from the West. Yet he is also walking on a pilgrimage of his own. Having recently witnessed the death of the last of his family, his trek around the great mountain awakens an inner landscape of love and grief, restoring precious fragments of his own.

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The Truth About Anna and Other Stories – William Warren

William Warren’s writings on Asia have entertained and informed readers all over the world for 40 years. As he says, ‘Even as a child, I preferred the unusual to the ordinary, the little-known to the familiar; and such inclinations remained with me as I grew up, determining what sort of books I particularly enjoyed, the places I wanted most to visit, and, after I started writing, the subjects that most appealed to me.’ The essays in this book, all of them about Asia and collected here for the first time, are linked by a taste for oddity and romance.

Their subjects range from Anna Leonowens – generally known as the sugar-sweet heroine of The King and I, but revealed here as a somewhat different Anna, less appealing but more interesting – to the significance of amulets and of shrines, Asian women, cobra as a gastronomic treat, the myth surrounding Jim Thompson, and the truth behind some of the Asian writings of Somerset Maugham – to name just a few.

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Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China – Leslie T. Chang

An eye-opening and previously untold story, Factory Girls is the first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China.

China has 130 million migrant workers–the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta.

As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life–a world where nearly everyone is under thirty; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family’s migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation.

A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America’s shores remade our own country a century ago.

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The Essential Marathi Cookbook – Kaumudi Marathe

The Essential Marathi Cookbook, a modern, easy-to-use introduction to several Marathi sub-cuisines, travels across the regions and religions of Maharashtra to bring out the most authentic and appetising recipes from the state. Journalist and chef Kaumudi Marathe presents a varied and nuanced selection ranging from the delectable entrees long associated with Maharashtra to appetising and unusual side dishes, and a plethora of desserts, as well as lesser-known but equally tantalising family and regional specialities which have never before appeared in an English-language cookbook.

The comprehensive introduction describes Marathi cooking basics, ingredients and techniques, and also explains the special spices used in Marathi kitchens along with the methods for their best use in seasonings. Packed with personal anecdotes and food memories from the author and other contributors to the book, The Essential Marathi Cookbook is the definite guide to Marathi food and customs.

Recipes include Pithla-Bath (zesty gram flour sauce with hot rice), Shiryachi Poli (sweet semolina-stuffed bread), Ambyacha Loncha (green mango-mustard pickle), Spicy Kolhapuri Mutton, Suranachi Koshimbir (elephant’s foot yam salad), Kelphulachi Bhaji (banana blossom stir-fry), Pach Dalichi Amti (five lentil stew), Mugache Kadhan (Konkan lentil-coconut pudding), Bol Marie (East Indian coconut pie), Pathare Prabhu Baked Karanjis (Coconut crescents), Kharvas (first-milk custard), Khudi (sauteed East Indian style chicken), Ukad Shengule (sorghum pasta), Kaumudi’s Grandmother’s Lettuce Salad.