Journey to Ithaca - Softcover

Desal, Anita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140258183 ISBN 13: 9780140258189

Publisher: Penguin, 1996

Synopsis

Matteo and Sophie join the 1970s flight of young Europeans to India. Matteo - Italian, raised in the luscious countryside around Lake Como, restless since childhood - has been introduced by a tutor to Hermann Hesse's The Journey to the East, and it opens in him a desperate longing. Sophie - German, practical, worldly - is willing to follow him to the ends of the earth. In India, together they visit swamis, gurus, ashrams - always searching. Matteo is seeking spiritual enlightenment, but for Sophie fulfillment lies in earthly love. And when they meet a holy woman known as the Mother, the differences between them seem to explode. When we learn the Mother's story, we see it as an earlier version of their own - the story of a young girl growing up in Cairo and finding her way East by joining a troupe of Indian dancers she has met in Europe. Her journey, a young woman's daring progress through Paris and Venice and New York, until she finds her moment of transcendence in India, comments on, and gives added breadth to, the young couple's quest.

About this title

Review:

"A beautiful book of epic scope... Anita Desai has surpassed her own previous high standards" (Literary Review)

"Full of revelations and pleasures" (Independent on Sunday)

"She writes an extraordinarily delicate, lucid English... She is a writer's writer in that anyone who has ever set pen to paper must ask himself just what it is about the writing that makes it so memorable" (Victoria Glendinning Times Literary Supplement)

"Superbly powerful... A rich, evocative book" (Spectator)

Book Description:

'One of the best Indian novelists writing in English' - Independent

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0140258183
• ISBN 13: 9780140258189
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336