SHORTLISTED FOR THE 1999 BOOKER PRIZE Uma, the plain, spinster daughter of a close-knit Indian family, is trapped at home, smothered by her overbearing parents and their traditions, unlike her ambitious younger sister Aruna, who brings off a 'good' marriage, and brother Arun, the disappointing son and heir who is studying in America. Across the world in Massachusetts, life with the Patton family is bewildering for Arun in the alien culture of freedom, freezers and paradoxically self-denying self-indulgence.

Award-winning novelist Anita Desai explores time and transformation in these three artful novellas

Set in Africa, it is the story of Dinesen's years in Africa--together with Shadows on the Grass. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

As Eckhart Tolle has written, poetry "has been recognized since ancient times as a highly appropriate medium for the expression and transmission of spiritual truth." The Clear Light is Steve Taylor's latest contribution to this poetic tradition, offering short and powerful reflections as a guide to spiritual awakening and as experiential glimpses of the state of enlightenment itself. Taylor ranges widely, through subjects including "Making the Human Race Whole," "Freedom from the Past," and "The Reality of Connection," always in clear and simple language. Best of all, he reminds us of the choices we always have when life feels chaotic and overwhelming: empathy, acceptance, and love. Soothing but also challenging, Taylor's words continually affirm the profound bedrock of peace and even joy in the present that is always available. The book's eponymous reflection says it best: There is nothing that can't be undone no past injury that can't be healed no past mistake that can't be corrected in the clear light of the present. Reading this book is a transformational spiritual experience in itself.

Within all of us lies a source of infinite bliss, clarity of wisdom, and compassion for others. In this unique and highly praised book, based on Buddhaʹs Tantric teachings, the contemporary Buddhist Master, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, presents authentic methods for discovering this inner wealth for ourselves. In a clear and precise way, he explains step-by-step how we can generate a deeply peaceful and concentrated mind by harnessing the subtle energy system within our body. With this blissful awareness we can uncover our true nature, destroy ignorance and suffering at its root, and swiftly become a source of inspiration and benefit for others. -- Publisher description.

Sophie and Matteo are young and in love, sharing a dissatisfaction with their bourgeois Italian upbringing. Naturally, like so many other young Westerners in the sixties and seventies, they go to India. But the realities of life in an ashram ignite their differences; Sophie wants to be a tourist and go to Goa and eat shrimp, which Matteo scorns, seeking the ‘real’ India. Pragmatic Sophie is disillusioned by the hardships they encounter, while her husband, who yearns for spiritual fulfillment, sees only the purity of ascetic life, leading him to Mother, a charismatic guru. Trying to reclaim an ailing Matteo, Sophie embarks on a new journey in search for a different truth; that of Mother’s mysterious past. Soon, she finds that the immortal has a history of her own; born in Cairo, she was once Laila, a dancer who toured the world before coming to Bombay to search for ‘divine love’. What each of the three people discover, on their individual quests, is at its heart that ancient truth: that wisdom is found in the journey itself. A stirring, profound exploration of emotional exile, of sacred and profane loves, Journey to Ithaca is a masterful novel.