Age Of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

£8.99

William Dalrymple travels around the Indian subcontinent, journeying to places that few travellers ever get to see and often he goes at great personal risk. The name of the book comes from the author’s belief that the region is falling into the most fearsome of all epochs, known as, “the Kali Yug”, a time of strife, corruption, darkness and disintegration.

Through his love for the subcontinent Dalrymple is able to convey the diversity of cultural identity in every page, making the chronicling of political corruption, ethnic violence and social disintegration ever more poignant. The series of essays sees him interview drug barons on the North-West Frontier as well as Imran Khan and Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. He even makes an encounter with the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

This disquieting book, written when the region needed to start asking tough questions, won the French Prix D'Astrolabe in 2005.