A rich, exciting read for the armchair Indiana Jones who longs to learn the secrets of Houdini.
A Briton of Afghan descent reveals his quest for the secret of India’s greatest conjurers—a journey that takes him through several subcontinental cities and provides a humorous anthropological study of the world of Indian con artists.
Hoping to find Jan, the Indian illusionist who initiated Shah into the world of conjuring as a child, the author starts out in Delhi at Hotel Bliss, a partially submerged dwelling where “the rats that survived the flood could be heard nibbling on the cockroaches in the dank corridor outside my room.” He soon finds Jan, but the magician refuses to teach him and advises him to seek Feroze, the renowned conjurer of Calcutta. The wild goose chase continues on the Farakka Express, a train infamous for harboring its “own breed of brigand,” groups of tricksters who, disguised as shoe cleaners and passengers, maintain a cooperative swindling system. Shah detours into holy Varansi (where the abolition of sati leaves castigated widows praying for death) and on to Calcutta’s streets—where he learns why mothers rent babies to beggars. Poetic descriptions of these ghastly sights and fiendish foes are spiced with a unique, dark humor. After enduring several hardships—including bedbugs, robbery, and the fetid Ganges—Shah finds Feroze and is granted apprenticeship at the magician’s mansion. But Feroze proves to be a tyrannical master and his sadistic training regimen soon has the obedient apprentice thirsting for revenge. As Shah cleverly psychoanalyzes Feroze, he renders a hilarious skit of an underling on the verge of rebellion. Feroze is so intriguing that the narration loses momentum once he orders Shah to go on a solo journey to encounter more “godmen.” Still, Shah’s colorful, lively portraits give each character depth.
A rich, exciting read for the armchair Indiana Jones who longs to learn the secrets of Houdini.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-55970-580-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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