Nine Lives

by William Dalrymple

First published 2009

Amazon

4.1(10,143)

Nine Lives presents the stories of nine religious practitioners in contemporary India, including a Jain nun, a ritual dancer, a prison-guard-turned-deity performer, a Sufi singer and a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Dalrymple allows each subject’s testimony to carry the narrative while supplying the historical and religious background needed to understand it.

The portraits show traditions adapting to migration, tourism, political violence, consumer culture and changing social expectations. The book is neither a survey of Indian religion nor a conventional travelogue; it is an oral history of individual lives shaped by demanding forms of faith and practice.