The romance of books
Pradeep Sebastian has been an avid bibliophile and book collector for over a decade. In this collection of essays, he paints in full splendour the picture of a life devoted to the romance of books, blending personal experience, revelatory conversations and bewitching legends from the world of books.Meet the biryani chef guarding a prized Ottoman manuscript, track the mysterious “Book Prince” of Kolkata, and visit the cottage in Kodaikanal that lures book collectors with its siren song. Discover how an emperor’s defeat brought illuminated manuscripts into sixteenth-century India, how a rare 1865 edition of Alice in Wonderland surfaced in an Indian bazaar, and much more.An Inky Parade is a window into the charming world of antiquarian book trade in India and around the world, as well as an ode to the book as an object of art, sure to delight every reader.*
A guide to indigenous flora
HarperCollinsTrees of South India is a result of over 50 years of dedicated work of restoring and researching the forests and native trees of the Coromandel coast of South India, all the way to the lower reaches of the Western Ghats, and on to the hillocks of the Eastern Ghats – a contiguous woodland until a few thousand years ago. Geographically, this range covers the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and, to some extent, Odisha. Within this vast span there are a number of distinct forest types adapted to variations in rainfall, soil type, altitude and fauna.Containing deep botanical knowledge and a wealth of information, this detailed and easy-to-use pictorial guide will help readers identify 190 ecologically important species of native trees and shrubs, including many rare and threatened plants such as satin wood, poplar-leaved ardor, Indian kino, red sanders and rosewood, etc. With growing awareness of the significance of native forests in the fight against climate change, this book is a powerful resource for amateur naturalists, plant explorers and conservationists interested in learning about indigenous flora and working towards their preservation.*
The extraordinary experiences of an ordinary man
{{/usCountry}}The extraordinary experiences of an ordinary man
{{/usCountry}}One summer morning in 1977, nineteen-year-old Lorenzo Senesi of Aquilina, Italy, drives his Vespa motor-scooter into a speeding Fiat and breaks his forearm. It keeps him in bed for a month, and his boggled mind thinks of unfamiliar things: Where has he come from? Where is he going? And how to find out more about where he ought to go?When he recovers, he enrols for a course in physiotherapy. He also joins a prayer group, and visits Praglia Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in the foothills outside Padua.The monastery will become his home for 10 years, its isolation and discipline the anchors of his life, and then send him to a Benedictine ashram in faraway Bangladesh — a village in Khulna district, where monsoon clouds as black as night descend right down to river and earth. He will spend many years here. He will pray seven times a day, learn to speak Bengali and wash his clothes in the river, paint a small chapel, start a physiotherapy clinic to ease bodies out of pain, and fall, unexpectedly, in love. And he will find that a life of service to God is enough, but that it is also not enough.A study of the extraordinary experiences of an ordinary man, a study of both the majesty and the banality of the spiritual path, Upamanyu Chatterjee’s new novel is a quiet triumph. It marks a new phase in the literary journey of one of India’s finest and most consistently original writers.*
*All copy from book flap.