{"product_id":"nine-lives-hardcover","title":"Nine Lives [HARDCOVER]","description":"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet - then spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the violence by hand printing the best prayer flags in India. A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve to death. A woman leaves her middle-class family in Calcutta, and her job in a jute factory, only to find unexpected love and fulfilment living as a Tantric skull feeder in a remote cremation ground. A prison warden from Kerala becomes, for two months of the year, a temple dancer and is worshipped as a deity; then, at the end of February each year, he returns to prison. An illiterate goat herd from Rajasthan keeps alive an ancient 4,000-line sacred epic that he, virtually alone, still knows by heart. A devadasi - or temple prostitute - initially resists her own initiation into sex work, yet pushes both her daughters into a trade she now regards as a sacred calling. Nine people, nine lives. Each one taking a different religious path, each one an unforgettable story. Exquisite and mesmerising, and told with an almost biblical simplicity, William Dalrymple's first travel book in over a decade explores how traditional forms of religious life in South Asia have been transformed in the region's rapid change. A distillation of twenty-five years of exploring India and writing about its religious traditions, Nine Lives is a modern Indian Canterbury Tales.\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Best of Used books","offers":[{"title":"Used","offer_id":44276758610177,"sku":"2CWD0VUMA-Used","price":399.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0421\/4299\/0495\/products\/NineLives_9b11c392-2a4b-490c-85b2-3778b4b49148.jpg?v=1627227164","url":"https:\/\/bestofusedbooks.com\/products\/nine-lives-hardcover","provider":"Best Of Used Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}