Search results for ""author ilija trojanow""

The River Ganges has a thousand names. Hindu priests regard it as a sin to call her a river at all. She is a goddess, the source of the world, her waters holy and healing and still sold to Hindus all over the world. Ilija Trojanow travelled along the Ganges, from the source, where it breaks free from the eternal ice in the Himalayas, to the great cities, by boat, by bus, on overcrowded trains. He visited the great Hindu festivals and talked to those who warn of ecological disasters. His colourful report describes a country between ancient traditions and astonishing modernity and the holy river that crosses it for hundreds of miles.

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Ilija Trojanow's journey from Mumbai to Mecca is told in the tradition of the rihla, one of the oldest genres of classical Arabic literature and describes the Hajj, the pilgrimage to the holy sites of Islam. 'From the very first moment they realise that the Hajj - the pilgrimage to Mecca - is among the duties of each and every Muslim, the faithful long to go.' Trojanov, with the help of his friends, donned the ihram, the traditional garb of the pilgrim. He joined hundreds of thousands of Muslims who each year go on the Hajj, the greatest demonstration of the Muslim faith. In three short weeks he experienced a tradition dating back over one thousand years This is his account, personal yet enlightening, for the interested non-Muslims who remain barred from the holy sites of Islam.

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Zeno Hintermeier is a scientist working as a travel guide on an Antarctic cruise ship, encouraging the wealthy to marvel at the least explored continent and to open their eyes to its rapid degradation. It is a troubling turn in the life of an idealistic glaciologist. Now in his early sixties, Zeno bewails the loss of his beloved glaciers, the disintegration of his marriage, and the foundering of his increasingly irrelevant career. Troubled in conscience and goaded by the smug complacency of the passengers in his charge, he starts to plan a desperate gesture that will send a wake-up call to an overheating world.The Lamentations of Zeno is an extraordinary evocation of the fragile and majestic wonders to be found at a far corner of the globe, written by a novelist who is a renowned travel writer. Poignant and playful, the novel recalls the experimentation of high-modernist fiction without compromising a limpid sense of place or the pace of its narrative. It is a portrait of a man in extremis, a haunting and at times irreverent tale that approaches the greatest challenge of our age-perhaps of our entire history as a species-from an impassioned human angle.

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