SOUNDTRACKS OF MY LIFE -Carl ClevesSoundtracks of my life is a blended memoir with a sweeping musical world history, enriched with cultural and historical detail, and observations of the human condition. Carl Cleves takes readers on an intimate global journey in his search for the elusive feeling of tarab, the Arabic notion of musical and poetic ecstasy. A parade of musicians accompanies us, famous and obscure, from the first thrill of French chansonniers in his Belgian ch...

From the Sudan to Northern New South Wales, Tarab is an epic, mesmerising tale of high adventure and the search for meaning. Carl Cleves escapes national service in Belgium to live in South Africa at the height of the apartheid era. So begin the adventures and quests, wanderings and narrow escapes, mishaps and illuminations of a guitar-toting troubadour in his roles as young beat poet, law student, single father, relief worker in India and recording star in Brazil. Cleves's page t...

Winner of the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award, Kiran Desai’s extraordinary novel of love and loss, now reissued with a new introduction by the authorPublished to astonishing acclaim, The Inheritance of Loss heralds Kiran Desai as one of our most insightful novelists. In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, an embittered judge wants only to retire in peace when his orphaned grand...

Ted Simon is the author of the classic travel book JUPITER'S TRAVELS. It documents his four-year journey round the world by motorbike, travelling through Europe, Africa, South and North America, and Asia. A number one bestseller in the late 1970s, it is still regarded as one of the greatest motorcycle books - indeed, one of the greatest travel books - ever written.In 2001, at the age of 69, Ted Simon decided to retrace his journey, and DREAMING OF JUPITER is the result. It took him ...

Michael Palin tackles the full length of the Himalaya in this terrific number one bestseller.Having risen to the challenge of seas, poles, dhows and deserts, the highest mountains in the world were a natural target for Michael Palin. In a journey rarely, if ever, attempted before, in 6 months of hard travelling Palin takes on the full length of the Himalaya including the Khyber Pass, the hidden valleys of the Hindu Kush, ancient cities like Peshawar and Lahore, the...

“There are those who think that Paul Theroux is the finest travel writer working in English. This collection can only enhance that reputation.”—The New York Times Book ReviewAuthor and travel writer Paul Theroux does what no one else can: he travels to the isolated, unusual, and fascinating spots of the world, and creates an elegy to them that makes readers feel they are traveling with him. Evocative, breathtaking, intriguing, here is the armchair traveler...

Robbie Marshall had it all - love, children and a successful business. So why did he trade it all in for the saddle of a Triumph Trophy and an out-of-date world atlas? Robbie knew that if he did not indulge his desire to explore, he would regret it for the rest of his life. After shipping his Triumph motorbike to the United States, Robbie kick-started his life on a journey that would take him across five continents and around the globe. Despite witnessing a gangland execution, sleeping rou...

Travelling through a country he has always dreamed of visiting, the author is confused and perplexed by India; a land he does not understand, and one that does not conform to the rules of any society or culture he has yet encountered. This book is the story of his attempt to make sense of it all. Join him on his journey through the enigma that is India, and see what happens when a cynical neurotic western rationalist is confronted by the spiritualism, poverty and anarchy of India.Fr...

No one sees the world quite like John Gimlette. As The New York Times once noted, “he writes with enormous wit, indignation, and a heightened sense of the absurd.” Writing for both the adventurer and the armchair traveler, he has an eye for unusually telling detail, a sense of wonder, and compelling curiosity for the inside story. This time, he travels to Sri Lanka, a country only now emerging from twenty-six years of civil war. Delving deep into the nation’s story, Gimlette provi...

Memory, Ji Bai would say, is this old sack here, this poor dear that nobody has any use for any more.As the novel begins, Salim Juma, in exile from Tanzania, opens up a gunny sack bequeathed to him by a beloved great-aunt. Inside it he discovers the past — his own family’s history and the story of the Asian experience in East Africa. Its relics and artefacts bring with them the lives of Salim’s Indian great-grandfather, Dhanji Govindji, his extensive family, and all their ...

Mr Fernando led me into a dark room that was lined with book-cases and smelled of leather and damp. The polished, concrete floor of the library was covered with white jasmine flowers that had blown through the windows during the storm. He began to select from the shelves a collection of disintegrating books. ‘If you are going to read any of them, it should really be this one,’ he said as he passed me two thick volumes, embossed with gold lettering and spotted with damp. The work was simply...

Irreverent, laugh-out-loud tales of living and travelling in India.