Product Description

The fourth book from the most acclaimed and gifted young travel writer of his generation, author of the best-selling In Xanadu, City of Djinns and From the Holy Mountain. William Dalrymple, who wrote so magically about India in City of Djinns, returns to the country in a series of remarkable essays. Featured in the pages of The Age of Kali are fifteen-year-old guerrilla girls and dowager Maharanis; flashy Bombay drinks parties and violent village blood feuds; a group of vegetarian terrorists intent on destroying India's first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet; and a palace where port and cigars are still carried to guests on a miniature silver steam train. Dalrymple meets such figures as Imran Khan, Benazir Bhutto and Baba Sehgal, the Indian Gary Glitter; he witnesses the macabre nightly offering to the bloodthirsty goddess Parashakti -- She Who is Seated on a Throne of Five Corpses; he experiences caste massacres in the badlands of Bihar and dines with a drug baron on the North-West Frontier; he discovers such oddities as the terrorist apes of Jaipur (only brought to book when the municipality began impregnating their bananas with opium) and the shrine where Lord Krishna is said to make love every night to his 16,108 wives and 64,732 milkmaids.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21810 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
William Dalrymple has proved himself to be one of the most perceptive and enjoyable travel writers of the 1990s. His first book In Xanadu became an instant back-packer's classic, winning a stream of literary prizes. City of Djinns and From the Holy Mountain soon followed, to universal critical praise. Yet it is to India where Dalrymple continues to return in his travels, and his fourth book The Age of Kali is his most reflective book to date.

The result of 10 year's living and travelling 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 slip into the cultural pessimism of books such as V.S. Naipaul's Beyond Belief. 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 non-fictional companion pieces to Salman Rushdie's bitterly satirical Shame. The Age of Kali is a dark, disturbing book which takes the pulse of a continent facing some tough questions. --Jerry Brotton

Review
'Dalrymple is probably the best travel writer of his generation' Daily Mail 'The future of travel writing lies in the hands of gifted authors like Dalrymple' Sara Wheeler, Independent

About the Author
William Dalrymple's first book, In Xanadu, won the Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and the Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award, and was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize. His second, City of Djinns, won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. His third, From the Holy Mountain, was published in April 1997. He is the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has recently written and presented a six-part series on the buildings of the Raj for Channel 4.

Customer Reviews

A highly lucid and intelligent series of essays on India.
I adored this book. Instead of the usual bland statements of a by-stander on the look-out for material for a book, Dalrymple has very obviously written a book about what he has seen in the course of many years' dedicated observation and investigation. The writing is as consistently finely-tuned as his observations, and his depth of knowledge enables him to throw light with what appears to be great ease on complex cultural, historical and religious issues.

I was born in India, left at the age of two and have returned for numerous visits since. Such entertaining and informative writing helps to explain and endear a country about which, on some levels, I know a fair amount, and on other levels I have often felt at a great loss to even begin to comprehend. In particular, the chapter about Hyderabad, fascinated me. My mother has often told stories of the great wealth and beauty of the city when she was growing up there in an affluent Muslim neighbourhood, but having seen it only in the 1970s to 1990s, I found these stories slightly unbelievable. Reading Dalrymple's book will certainly make me look at the city in a new light next time I visit, as it has explained the context and history of it with an insight and an interest that I have not found elsewhere.

A spicy Bombay mix
This set of journalistic essays on the state of the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) in the 1990s should be essential reading for every visitor to this remarkable part of the world. The topics are wide-ranging, shocking, disturbing, uplifting and always absorbing. From political corruption to the Bombay glitterati to religious fervour and the caste system, William Dalrymple provides insights into numerous aspects of contemporary India. A lesson in history, economics, politics, religion, not to mention bigotry, hatred and corruption. A clash between the new and the old and the present day problems caused by this in Indian society is the overwhelming theme. He has a most readable style and his own fascination comes across in his writing. It reminded me intensely of why I both loved and hated India when I travelled there - and also made me ashamed of knowing so little of the local way of life (a bit like the narrator of "Are you experienced?" when he meets the journalist!) I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Superb - in-depth insights into the darker side of India
I was very impressed by this book. I have lived in India for a number of years, but I still found this book profoundly illuminating. The author has taken much time and effort to get first hand accounts from the people at the heart of the stories. I am going to go out and buy his other books as well.