Tag: Tibet

In search of The Pagoda Tree: a four-part series

SoutherlyBlog

by Claire Scobie Over the next four weeks I’m writing about the process I went through thinking, dreaming, researching and writing my novel, The Pagoda Tree (Penguin). Set in eighteenth-century India, this is largely told through the eyes of a temple dancer, or devadasi, named Maya whose life is transformed by the arrival of the British. After my first book, Last Seen in Lhasa, was published I suffered from second book syndrome. As with many first-time authors, my first book, a travel memoir, was a labour of love, a story I felt compelled to write because of my years going…

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A Fine Balance

SoutherlyBlog

by Aashish Kaul Some months ago, while in India, I went up into the mountains. On a late afternoon, following a walk in the forest, with the day clear and the sun still strong, I came to a café and sat in the open. All around the pines were dark, and there was snow in them, you could see how light tussled to touch the snow that shone very white in the checkered shade. In front, at some distance, stretched from far north down into the east the glacial arc of the Himalayas separating me from Tibet, while to the…

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