A Goddess in the Stones

Norman Lewis avoids the easy pleasures of travelling through the hill-forts of Rajasthan, visiting palace hotels and the Taj Mahal. Instead his travels in India begin in the impoverished, overpopulated and corrupt state of Bihar - the scene of a brutal caste war between the untouchables and higher-caste gangsters. From these violent happenings, he heads down the west coast of Bengal and into the highlands of Orissa to testify to the life of the `indigenous tribals' who have survived in isolation. As William Dalrymple observed in The Spectator, `the great virtue of Norman Lewis as a writer is that he can make the most boring things interesting; whatever he is describing - whether it is a rickshaw driver, an alcohol crazed elephant, or a man defecating beside the road - Lewis senses are awake for sounds or smells, and he can make you think twice about scenes you have seen ten thousand times before . the book is full of some of the strangest facts imaginable ... It is a joy to read.'Other Norman Lewis titles published by Eland: Jackdaw Cake, The Missionaries, Voices of the Old Sea, A View of The World, Naples' 44, A Dragon Apparent, Golden Earth, The Honoured Society, An Empire of the East, In Sicily and The Tomb in Seville.