Certain that she is really a male trapped in a female body, Mary Ward pursues this elusive identity, much to the consternation of her mother, her brother, and a neighbor's son.

From the author of The Gustav Sonata At the age of six, Mary Ward, the child of a poor farming family in Suffolk, has a revelation: 'I am not Mary. That is a mistake. I am not a girl. I'm a boy.' So begins a heroic struggle to change gender, while around her others also strive to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world. Over a million Rose Tremain books sold 'A writer of exceptional talent ... Tremain is a writer who understands every emotion' Independent I 'There are few writers out there with the dexterity or emotional intelligence to rival that of the great Rose Tremain' Irish Times 'Tremain has the painterly genius of an Old Master, and she uses it to stunning effect' The Times 'Rose Tremain is one of the very finest British novelists' Salman Rushdie 'Tremain is a writer of exemplary vision and particularity. The fictional world is rendered with extraordinary vividness' Marcel Theroux, Guardian

Growing up in a gang in the city can be dark. Growing up Native American in a gang in Chicago is a whole different story. This book takes a trip through that unexplored part of Indian Country, an intense journey that is full of surprises, shining a light on the interior lives of people whose intellectual and emotional concerns are often overlooked. This dark, compelling, occasionally inappropriate, and often hilarious linked story collection introduces a character who defies all stereotypes about urban life and Indians. He will be in readers’ heads for a long time to come.

Rahul, the crime news editor of the Kannada Times, reluctantly agrees to go back to his home village to report and investigate a series of killings that took place due to poisoning. On arriving in the village, he encounters all the people he had voluntarily left behind for good and the past soon begins to catch up with him as he uncovers the plot of these killings. It is a race against time where he must unravel the case as soon as possible to save his family and friends who are now also in danger. While these happenings are taking place in the village, a cult led by a so-called Guruji Vishwas is gathering a strong following in the village with their promise of healing wounded souls and suffering people. The cult has strong ties with the past, and Rahul along with his cop friend must navigate through this village life which has hugely become influenced by Guruji's teachings. Also, an American movement comes into focus which had caused havoc in the United States and now threatens the life of the villagers as well as the citizens of India. A question arises eventually: Is Rahul trying to help his village, or is there something big at play here that includes the interests of the nation?

... "Twenty years of photographs by photographer and anthropologist Martin Gray. Accompanying each photograph is commentary that takes us into the history, mythology and spiritual magnetism of the particular place ..."--Jacket.

Sacred kingship has been the core political form, in small-scale societies and in vast empires, for much of world history. This collaborative and interdisciplinary book recasts the relationship between religion and politics by exploring this institution in long-term and global comparative perspective. Editors A. Azfar Moin and Alan Strathern present a theoretical framework for understanding sacred kingship, which leading scholars reflect on and respond to in a series of essays. They distinguish between two separate but complementary religious tendencies, immanentism and transcendentalism, which mold kings into divinized or righteous rulers, respectively. Whereas immanence demands priestly and cosmic rites from kings to sustain the flourishing of life, transcendence turns the focus to salvation and subordinates rulers to higher ethical objectives. Secular modernity does not end the struggle between immanence and transcendence—flourishing and righteousness—but only displaces it from kings onto nations and individuals. After an essay by Marshall Sahlins that ranges from the Pacific to the Arctic, the book contains chapters on religion and kingship in settings as far-flung as ancient Egypt, classical Greece, medieval Islam, Mughal India, modern European drama, and ISIS. Sacred Kingship in World History sheds new light on how religion has constructed rulership, with implications spanning global history, religious studies, political theory, and anthropology.

The reincarnation of a legendary nineteenth-century Caribbean emperor as a contemporary African leader is at the heart of this novel. Sacred River deals with the extraordinary lives, hopes, powerful myths, stories, and tragedies of the people of a modern West African nation. It is also the compelling love story of an idealistic philosophy professor and an ex-courtesan of incomparable beauty. Two hundred years after his death, the great Haitian emperor Henri Christophe miraculously appears in a dream to Tankor Satani, president of the fictional West African country of Kissi, with instructions for Tankor to continue Henri Christophe’s rule, which had been interrupted by “that damned Napoleon.” Ambitious in scope, Sacred River is a diaspora-inspired novel, in which Cheney-Coker has tackled the major themes of politics, social strife, crime and punishment, and human frailty and redemption in Malagueta, the fictional, magical town and its surroundings first created by the author in The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, for which he was awarded the coveted Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Sacred River is equally about love and politics, and marks the return to fiction of one of Africa’s major writers.