Back
Dreams of rivers and seas cover
2008•431 pages•Published•ENG•User Reviews

Dreams of rivers and seas

0.0/ 5
0 ratings

About This Book

A novel of India from one of England's finest writersFor some time now, I have been plagued, perhaps blessed, by dreams of rivers and seas, dreams of water.'Just days after Albert James writes these lines to his son John, in London, he is dead. Abandoning a pretty girlfriend and the lab where he is completing his PhD, John flies to Delhi to join his mother in mourning. A brilliant and controversial anthropologist, the nature of Albert James's research, and the circumstances of his death, are far from clear. On top of this, John must confront his mother's coolness, and the strangeness of the cremation ceremony that she has organised for his father. No sooner is the body consigned to the flames than a journalist arrives, determined to write a biography of the dead man. The widow will have nothing to do with the project, yet seems incapable of keeping away from the journalist.In Tim Parks's masterly new novel, India, with its vast strangeness, the density and intensity of its street life, its indifference to all distinctions between the religious and the secular, is a constant source of distraction to these westerners in search of clarity and identity. To John, the enigma of his father's dreams of rivers and seas appears to be one with the greater mystery of the country.

Track Your Reading

Sign in to save this book, track pages, log finished reads and rereads, and build your Reading Diary.

Sign In

Community Reviews

Reviews

Browse all reviews →
Sign in to review

No reviews yet. Be the first.

LiteratureFathers and sonsFictionFathersDeathFiction, family life, generalIndia, fictionFathers and sons, fictionAnthropologists, fictionLondon (england), fictionFiction, general

The Swinging Light

Book Details

First Published

2008

Pages

431 pages

Rating

0.0 / 5

Ratings

0

Editions

2

Publisher

Harvill Secker

Language

ENG

Status

Published

The People Behind The Book

Authors

You May Also Like

Recommended Books

Prentice Hall Literature--World Masterpieces cover

Prentice Hall Literature--World Masterpieces

1991

Burton Beers, Anna Ahkmatova, Dante Alighieri, Yehuda Amichai, Margaret Atwood, Basho, Charles Baudelaire, Giovanni Boccaccio, Heinrich Böll, Jorge Luis Borges, Buson Yosa, Italo Calvino, Albert Camus, Антон Павлович Чехов, Ch'ien T'ao, To Li Chien, Po Chu-i, Colette, Confucius, Julio Cortázar, Rubén Darío, Isak Dinesen, Jean de La Fontaine, Marie de France, Tu Fu, Federico García Lorca, Gabriel García Márquez, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich Gogolʹ, Günter Grass, Bessie Head, Heinrich Heine, Hitomaro Kakinomoto, Όμηρος, Lu Hsun, Victor Hugo, Henrik Ibsen, Kobayashi, Hideo, Franz Kafka, Yoshida Kenko, Omar Khayyam, Komachi Ono, Pär Lagerkvist, Stanisław Lem, Doris Lessing, Primo Levi, Niccolò Machiavelli, Najib Mahfouz, Thomas Mann, Christopher Marlowe, Guy de Maupassant, Czesław Miłosz, John Milton, Gabriela Mistral, Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Narayan, Pablo Neruda, Ōgai Mōri, Ovid, Blaise Pascal, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Octavio Paz, Luigi Pirandello, Plato, Pliny, Li Po, Александр Сергеевич Пушкин, Rainer Maria Rilke, Arthur Rimbaud, Manuel Rojas, Pierre de Ronsard, William Shakespeare, Sei Shōnagon, Александр Солженицын, Sophocles, Wole Soyinka, Jonathan Swift, Rabindranath Tagore, Лев Толстой, Toshiyori Minamoto, Chrétien de Troyes, Tsurayuki Ki, Pak, Tu-jin, Lao-Tze, Paul Valéry, François Villon, Nguyen Thi Vinh, Virgil, Andrei Vosnesensky, Derek Walcott, Wang, Wei, William Wordsworth, 川端康成, Yevgeny Yevtushenko