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  • Published: 1 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446402146
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
Categories:

Snakes And Ladders

Indian




By the world-famous novelist, this fascinating blend of personal memoir, historical anecdote and wry observation offers the indispensable guide and key to contemporary India in the fiftieth year of its independence. Entertaining, informative and passionate, there is no book like it. With a novelist's eye for detail and colour, Gita Mehta writes of the continent of contradictions that is host to one-sixth of the world's population. The world's largest democracy, it still practices the caste system. It's a burgeoning economic superpower, and one of the poorest nations on earth. It has the world's largest film industry, and the world's oldest religions. It is an ancient civilisation celebrating fifty years as a modern nation, entering a new civilisation many believe will belong to China and India. Now, as never before, the world wants to know what contemporary India is all about.

  • Published: 1 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446402146
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
Categories:

About the author

Gita Mehta

In addition to her books, Karma Cola, Raj, A River Sutra, Snakes and Ladders and Eternal Ganesha,Gita Mehta has written articles for a number of Indian, European and American magazines, and filmed documentaries for European and American television. Her books have been translated into thirteen languages and published in twenty-seven countries. She lives in New York, London and India.

Also by Gita Mehta

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Praise for Snakes And Ladders

Taking in politics, economics, autobiography, jokes, history, polemic, anecdote, interview, race, the arts, literature, caste and the sex industry... as seen from the inside.

John Walsh, Independent

Superb...a series of short essays, combining reminiscence, reportage and reflection...Gita Mehta's prose is precise, pointed and polished to a sheen... this is a book which informs and delights without presumption or pedantry.

Shashi Tharoor, Punch

Written with a frankness and incisiveness still in surprisingly short supply among many who write about India... a lively once over...written with deep affection.

Barbara Crossette, New York Times Book Review

The intelligent voice of India itself... a delicious evocation...formidably informed.

Publishers Weekly

Entertaining and beautifully written... A kaleidoscope of modern India.

The Economist