The Age of Kali (57 page)

ALSO BY
W
ILLIAM
D
ALRYMPLE
 

FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

A rich, story-filled travelogue chronicling Dalrymple’s journey across the entire Byzantine world, retracing the footsteps of two monks who made the same trip in the spring of A.D. 587. When John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist traveled from the shores of the Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt, they stayed in caves, monasteries, and remote hermitages, collecting the wisdom of the stylites and the desert fathers before their fragile world finally shattered under the great eruption of Islam. Using Moschos’s writings as his guide, Dalrymple recreates that epic journey, and his account of his travels is an elegy to the slowly dying civilization of Eastern Christianity and the people that have kept its flame alive.

Travel

NINE LIVES

In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

In portraits of people we might otherwise never know William Dalrymple distills his twenty-five years of travel in India to explore the challenges faced by practitioners of traditional forms of faith in contemporary India. For two months a year, a man in Kerala divides his time between jobs as a prison warden, a well-builder, and his calling as an incarnate deity. A temple prostitute watches her two daughters die from AIDS after entering a trade she regards as a sacred calling. A Jain nun recalls the pain of watching her closest friend ritually starve herself to death. Together, these tales reveal the resilience of individuals in the face of the relentless onslaught of modernity, the enduring legacy of tradition, and the hope and honor that can be found even in the most unlikely places.

Religion

VINTAGE DEPARTURES
Available wherever books are sold.
www.randomhouse.com