-
-
Price: £18.99
Online Discount: 10.00%
Your Price: £17.09
Availability: Available for dispatch within 1-2 working days.
Add To Basket
EAN: 9780091925765
Format: Hardback
Published: 7 Aug 2008
Other Editions:
Paperback
Synopsis
Myth, travelogue and holy writ, the Ramayana – the Journey of Rama – is India’s best-loved book, an inspiration to schoolchildren, monks and movie-makers. It's one of the world’s great epic tales, yet is largely unread in the Western world. The story of a man searching savage jungles for his kidnapped wife, the Ramayana combines Heart of Darkness with the Odyssey. And bizarrely, this violent and erotic account of a war between light and dark is at the heart of the fiercest controversy in contemporary Indian politics – one that has claimed over 10,000 lives.
When Martin Buckley first encountered the Ramayana twenty-five years ago, it became a guide to the complexities of Indian life. Here, he fulfils a dream – to retrace the route of Rama from his birthplace in north India to the climax of his confrontation with Evil in Sri Lanka. In doing so, Buckley finds that the epic is as much a key to understanding India today as it was 3,000 years ago. Some historians have recast the fight between the hero and a race of dark-skinned demons as a colonial war, waged by Aryan invaders against indigenous Indians. Incredibly, it is echoed today in the brutal civil war being fought in the jungles of Sri Lanka. At the same time, the God-King Rama inspires spiritual devotions of a kind almost unimaginable in the West.
An Indian Odyssey is the story of an adventurous and sometimes perilous passage through India by motorbike, microlight, bus and train. In the course of his own odyssey – physical and spiritual – Buckley witnesses death on the chaotic Great Trunk Road and passes through a war zone in Sri Lanka where bicycle bombs are the weapon of choice. A cast of mystics and Marxists, idealists and cynics – Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist – lays out the rich fabric of contemporary India and Sri Lanka, illuminated by the remarkable story of their past – and the quest of a man to rescue the woman he loves.
What the critics say
In this barnstorming account of a love affair with India that extends over more than a quarter of a century, Martin Buckley gives us a sensual, earthly view of the subcontinent… He is incredibly well-informed… An engaging and powerful book
- Daily Telegraph
An Indian Odyssey is a meditation on the mysteries of life masquerading as a rollicking road-trip. This is a post-theological divine comedy, in which the shattered remains of the Inferno and Paradiso are shaken together in a profane cocktail. But flashes of ecstasy keep breaking through as Martin Buckley heroically works his way through the carnal to the divine … India, in Buckley’s account, becomes a tumbling riot of brothels, beggars, bombs, road-accidents, Bhopal, bribes, caste, cloacae, temples, everywhere temples, and actual riots. It’s like a gigantic marketplace in which thousands of different gods are on offer and there is a cut-throat competition for customers. The more heaven, the more hell … Woven in to his own epic adventures is Buckley’s raunchy and believable abridgement of the epic Ramayana, worthy of Vikram Seth, which for the first time gave me a clear sense of who is who and what the hell is going on in this dark labyrinth of narrative.
- Independent
Travel writing with a difference as Buckley traces the route of the Ramayana, the great Indian epic, from north-west India to Sri Lanka, encountering 'Marxists and Mystics' along the way. A brilliant blend of travelogue, history and romance.
- Scotland on Sunday
A rich account of a country bursting with piety and mysticism…Buckley has interspersed the passages with his own translated excerpts of the Ramayana and, in this way, the book functions as a story of India, wrapped in a fairy tale, hidden in an often perilous and fascinating road-trip diary. Essential stuff, then, that brings the reader into the heart of the Indian subcontinent.
- Irish Times
Travelling by land, sea and a small plane from North East India to Sri Lanka and back, Martin Buckley recreates one of the great journeys in world literature, the Ramayana. The vast tapestry of life that is India is vividly portrayed in this lively portrayal of an ancient story brought to life through a modern odyssey and spiritual search where many of the questions and sources of conflict remain much the same today as thousands of years ago. An absorbing holiday read!
- Yoga and Health Magazine