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KALEIDOSCOPE CITY

Name: KALEIDOSCOPE CITY
Author: Piers Moore Ede
ISBN: 9781608198689

A YEAR IN VARANASI

by Piers Moore Ede ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2015

A thoughtful and incisive memoir/travelogue.

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A British travel writer’s account of an extended stay in the northern Indian city of Varanasi, a 5,000-year-old “experiment in human cohabitation” on the banks of the Ganges River.

Moore Ede (All Kinds of Magic: A Quest for Meaning in a Material World, 2010, etc.) first traveled to Varanasi en route to Nepal. He had very little idea of the place “other than it was supposed to be interesting.” It was only after he returned to live there for a year and interview its inhabitants that he was able to appreciate Varanasi’s amazing, and bewildering, complexity. Revered by Jains, Buddhists and Hindus, Varanasi was known as the “Holy City” because of the mythic promise of spiritual transcendence it offered believers. Yet its morally conservative surface belied darker realities. Drug dealing and human trafficking were serious problems, just as they were elsewhere in India. Heroine traders did brisk business in the city, as did brothels, which made use of services provided by homeless, widowed or kidnapped women. Corruption existed at every possible level. But as Moore Ede discovered, Varanasi was also a city of many delights. These included its famous sweets, which encompassed everything from “simple fudge-like creations to the most extraordinary concoctions of spice, dried fruit and cottage cheese.” Music was another glory. The author learned how Varanasi was not only home to the meditative rhythms of Vedic chanting; it was also an important center of north Indian classical music. Flowing eternally through the city was the river. “Tired and over-burdened” from being used in the past as a depository for cremated bodies, waste and, in the present, industrial effluvia, the once-magnificent river reigned supreme as the most contaminated river on the planet. For Moore Ede, however, the meaning of the river went even deeper. Like Varanasi itself, the Ganges was ultimately a symbol of India’s destructive “tryst” with modernity.

A thoughtful and incisive memoir/travelogue.

Pub Date: April 21, 2015

ISBN: 9781608198689

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.