| Nine Lives: in Search of the Sacred in Modern India | |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Travel writing/religion |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date | 2009 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover,) |
| ISBN | 978-1-4088-0061-4 |
| Preceded by | The Last Mughal, The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 |
Nine Lives: in Search of the Sacred in Modern India is a 2009 travel book by William Dalrymple.
Contents |
Dalrymple's seventh book is about the lives of nine Indians, a Buddhist monk, a Jain nun, a lady from a middle-class family in Calcutta, a prison warden from Kerala, an illiterate goat herd from Rajasthan, and a devadasi among others, as seen during his Indian travels. The book explores the lives of nine such people, each of whom represent a different religious path in nine chapters.
For the launch of the book in India some of the characters in the book performed for the audience,[1] with one of character's Hari Das from Kerala leading the Theyyam troupe and Paban Das Baul from Bengal leading the Baul singers.[1]
The book was published by Bloomsbury to great acclaim, The Observer remarking that it "ranks with the very finest travel writing".[2] On publication it went to the number one slot on the Indian non-fiction section best seller list.[3] Hirsh Sawhney, writing in The Guardian, admires the book's 'awareness of the world's innate cosmopolitanism' and 'remarkably diverse array of characters'. He calls Nine Lives a 'compelling and poignant' work, but believes that Nine Lives does not challenge the partitioning of the world into 'anachronistic, seemingly irreconcilable compartments' like the author's other works.[4] Brian Schofield in The Sunday Times acknowledges the power and humanity of Dalrymple's portraits, calling them the work of "a towering talent" but also remarks on its narrow focus.[5] In contrast, Pico Iyer, in TIME Magazine, praises the "powerful restraint and clarity" the book brings to "precisely the two subjects — India and faith — that cause most observers to fly off into cosmic vagueness or spleen. The result is a deeply respectful and sympathetic portrait."[6] The distinguished Sanskritist Wendy Doniger also raved about the book in a cover story for the Times Literary Supplement: "Dalrymple vividly evokes the lives of these men and women, with the sharp eye and good writing that we have come to expect of his extraordinary travel books about India.. A glorious mixture of journalism, anthropology, history, and history of religions, written in prose worthy of a good novel, not since Kipling has anyone evoked village India so movingly. Dalrymple can conjure up a lush or parched landscape with a single sentence."[7]
The book was long listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2010.[8][9] It has received the 2010 Asia House Award for Asian Literature.