A Strange Kind of Paradise is an exploration of India's past & present, from the perspective of a foreigner who has lived in India for many years. Sam Miller investigates how the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans & Americans
- everyone really, except for Indians themselves
- came to imagine India. His account of the engagement between foreigners & India spans the centuries from Alexander the Great to Slumdog Millionaire. It features, among many others, Thomas the Apostle, the Chinese monk Xuanzang, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Vasco da Gama, Babur, Clive of India, several Victorian pornographers, Mark Twain, E. M. Forster, Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles & Steve Jobs. Interspersed between these tales is the story of Sam Miller's own 25-year-long love affair with India. The result is a spellbinding, 2, 500-year-long journey through Indian history, culture & society, in the company of an author who informs, educates & entertains in equal measure, as he travels in the footsteps of foreign chroniclers, exposes some of their fabulous fantasies & overturns long-held stereotypes about race, identity & migration. At once scholarly & thought-provoking, delightfully eccentric & laugh-out-loud funny, this book is destined to become a much-loved classic.

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A Strange Kind of Paradise is an exploration of India`s past & present, from the perspective of a foreigner who has lived in India for many years. Sam Miller investigates how the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans & Americans
- everyone really, except for Indians themselves
- came to imagine India. His account of the engagement between foreigners & India spans the centuries from Alexander the Great to Slumdog Millionaire. It features, among many others, Thomas the Apostle, the Chinese monk Xuanzang, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Vasco da Gama, Babur, Clive of India, several Victorian pornographers, Mark Twain, E. M. Forster, Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles & Steve Jobs. Interspersed between these tales is the story of Sam Miller`s own 25-year-long love affair with India. The result is a spellbinding, 2, 500-year-long journey through Indian history, culture & society, in the company of an author who informs, educates & entertains in equal measure, as he travels in the footsteps of foreign chroniclers, exposes some of their fabulous fantasies & overturns long-held stereotypes about race, identity & migration. At once scholarly & thought-provoking, delightfully eccentric & laugh-out-loud funny, this book is destined to become a much-loved classic.

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A Strangeness in My Mind is a novel Orhan Pamuk has worked on for six years. It is the story of boza seller Mevlut, the woman to whom he wrote three years` worth of love letters, & their life in Istanbul. In the four decades between 1969 & 2012, Mevlut works a number of different jobs on the streets of Istanbul, from selling yoghurt & cooked rice, to guarding a car park. He observes many different kinds of people thronging the streets, he watches most of the city get demolished & re-built, & he sees migrants from Anatolia making a fortune; at the same time, he witnesses all of the transformative moments, political clashes, & military coups that shape the country. He always wonders what it is that separates him from everyone else
- the source of that strangeness in his mind. But he never stops selling boza during winter evenings & trying to understand who his beloved really is. What matters more in love, what we wish for, or what our fate has in store? Do our choices dictate whether we will be happy or not, or are these things determined by forces beyond our control? A Strangeness in My Mind tries to answer these questions while portraying the tensions between urban life & family life, & the fury & helplessness of women inside their homes.
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At a family wedding Mevlut catches sight of a girl with whom he falls in love. After a secret courtship of letters passed via his cousin, she agrees to elope with him, & on a dark night the two come together for the first time. As they rush to catch a train to Istanbul, Mevlut realises he has been misled. But the die is cast, & the situation will determine the rest of his days. Over the next four decades in Istanbul, Mevlut works various jobs to support his loving wife & family; work that gives him a special perspective on his rapidly changing city & the people who live there. & every evening he walks the streets, selling his wares & dreaming his dreams. ...

In the last year of the 20th century the celebrated foreign correspondent Fergal Keane set out for the BBC on a journey through Britain. After years covering the world's conflict zones, Keane
- the child of Irish parents living temporarily in London
- turned his attention to the country in which he was born but where, until recently, he had never lived. From Glasgow to Leeds, London, Cornwall, Wales & to the very fringed of United Kingdom in Country Tyrone, he discovered a surprising & little-known world of poverty, exclusion & alienation. At times angry & always passionate, this is Fergal Keane at his very best. It is a work of compelling story-telling, as the author hears the small voices lost in the bigger picture: listen to Fiona, the young heroin addict who sells her body & steals to support her habit; meet the Protestants & Catholics living side by side on this country's westernmost border; hear the tragic story of a farming family in South Wales blighted by suicide. & consider that in August 1999 a Scottish shipyard where 1, 200 men work was sold for two million pounds
- the price of a large house in Islington, spiritual home of New Labour. Though this is an unflinching & sometimes shocking book, it is also curiously uplifting, as Keane reports on the courage & lack of self-pity of those he encountered. Applying the compassion & insight for which his foreign reporting is widely admired, Fergal Keane has written a compelling account of the nation today as well as a provocative challenge to those who promised a new Britain for the new millennium.


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When James Bowen finds a ginger street cat in the hall of his sheltered accommodation he is unable to resist taking care of the injured animal. Soon James & Bob form a firm friendship & become a regular site around London. A Street Cat Named Bob is a moving story about a friendship that helps them find hope & overcome their troubled pasts. ...

When James Bowen finds a ginger street cat in the hall of his sheltered accommodation he is unable to resist taking care of the injured animal. Soon James & Bob form a firm friendship & become a regular site around London. A Street Cat Named Bob is a moving story about a friendship that helps them find hope & overcome their troubled pasts. ...

The phenomenal Number One bestseller about best friends James & Bob. Now a major motion picture. When James Bowen found an injured, ginger street cat curled up in the hallway of his sheltered accommodation, he had no idea just how much his life was about to change. James was living hand to mouth on the streets of London & the last thing he needed was a pet. Yet James couldn`t resist helping the strikingly intelligent tom cat, whom he quickly christened Bob. He slowly nursed Bob back to health & then sent the cat on his way, imagining he would never see him again. But Bob had other ideas. Soon the two were inseparable & their diverse, comic & occasionally dangerous adventures would transform both their lives, slowly healing the scars of each other`s troubled pasts. A Street Cat Named Bob is a moving & uplifting story that will touch the heart of anyone who reads it. ...

This title takes a 12, 000-year walk through history. Think of the street you live on. Now think of how it may have looked in 10, 000 BCE, or in Roman times, or in Victorian England at the height of the Industrial Revolution. Steve Noon`s ”A Street Through Time” takes you on a time travelling journey that you won`t forget. Beautiful double-page illustrations bring fourteen key periods in history to life. You will see magnificent buildings go up & come down, new churches built on the site of ancient temples, wooden bridges destroyed & then remade in stone, & statues demolished then unearthed many years later. You`ll find out how people lived long ago
- the tools they used, what they wore, what they ate & what they did all day. In an added twist, you can search for the time traveller in each period & locate the objects that have managed to survive through the ages. Revised & updated for a new generation, Steve Noon`s ”A Street Through Time” is perfect for parents & children to look at together. The more you look, the more you`ll see.
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` There`s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, & our duty is to unravel it, & isolate it, & expose every inch of it`. Arriving in the wilderness of London & in need of lodgings, Dr John Watson finds himself living at 221b Baker Street with one Sherlock Holmes. When a corpse is discovered in a derelict house Watston, fascinated by his brilliant, eccentric companion, is soon drawn into Holmes` investigations. There`s no sign of a struggle, no wounds on the body, yet scrawled in blood across the walls is the word RACHE
- revenge. Watson is baffled but for Holmes the game is afoot...
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