検索キーワード： ナレーター "Sam Dastor" すべてのカテゴリー

A House for Mr. Biswas, by Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul, is a powerful novel about one man's struggle for identity and belonging. Born into poverty, then trapped in the shackles of charity and gratitude, Mr. Biswas longs for a house he can call his own. He loathes his wife and her wealthy family, upon whom he is dependent. Finding himself a mere accessory on their estate, his constant rebellion is motivated by the one thing that can symbolize his independence.

This is a story from the Great Explorers collection.

Kipling's masterpiece Kim is his final and most famous work and one of the first and greatest espionage stories ever written. It explores the life of Kimball O'Hara, an Irish orphan who spends his childhood as a vagrant in Lahore. When he befriends an aged Tibetan lama his life is transformed as he is requested to accompany him on a mysterious quest to find the legendary River of the Arrow and achieve Enlightenment.

The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation - of both human life and the natural environment - and the origin of our contemporary climate crisis. Tracing the threats to our future to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean, The Nutmeg's Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. The story of the nutmeg becomes a parable revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials.

Rebels Against the Raj tells the little-known story of seven people who chose to struggle for a country other than their own: foreigners to India who across the late 19th to late 20th century arrived to join the freedom movement fighting for independence. Of the seven, four were British, two American and one Irish. Four men, three women. Before and after being jailed or deported they did remarkable and pioneering work in a variety of fields: journalism, social reform, education, organic agriculture, environmentalism.

For decades Prince Philip shared the Queen’s burden of office without upstaging her, always privately providing reassurance and advice but never overstepping the boundaries of his supporting role. It was an unforgiving position - a challenge for anyone - but one that he met head on. He remained the Queen’s adviser and closest confidant and was known as such the world over. That said, he was wise enough to recognise his limitations and the constraints of his role.

Arising out of Naipaul’s lifelong obsession and passion for a country that is at once his and totally alien, India: A Million Mutinies Now relates the stories of many of the people he met traveling there more than 50 years ago. He explores how they have been steered by the innumerable frictions present in Indian society - the contradictions and compromises of religious faith, the whim and chaos of random political forces. 

In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency”, V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left 100 years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past. 

When Robert Pomeroy, a young undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, finds a letter slipped under his door in the early hours of a rainy day, he flies into a panic. He hurries to the railway station. But he doesn’t reach his destination alive. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called upon to investigate this tragedy on the railway. It soon becomes apparent that Cambridge’s hopes of success in the forthcoming boat race rested on Pomeroy’s shoulders. 

When a young woman comes forward saying she’s the reincarnation of Riya Kaur, a wife and mother who vanished during the bloody 1984 anti-Sikh riots, Puri is dismissive. He’s busy enough dealing with an irate matrimonial client whose daughter is complaining about her groom’s thunderous snoring. Puri’s indomitable Mummy-ji, however, is adamant the client is genuine. How else could she so accurately describe under hypnosis Riya Kaur’s life and final hours?

In The Guiding Light, Dr Kalam chooses the finest examples of writings from the numerous books, religious texts, philosophical tracts and poetry that he has read over the years. These words have impacted and shaped his thinking, helped him in times of need and made him the person he is. He has quoted from these works in his writings and lectures that have inspired millions of people he has met all over the world.

In the India of 1942, two rapes take place simultaneously - that of an English girl in Mayapore, and that of India by the British. In each, physical violence, racial animosity, the coercion of the weak by the strong all play their part, but playing a part too are love, affection, loyalty, and recognition that the last division of all to be overcome is the colour of the skin.

The Railway Detective faces his most dangerous adversary yet. It is 1852, and Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Sergeant Victor Leeming are faced with their most complex and difficult case to date. As a train speeds over the Sankey Viaduct, a man is hurled from a carriage and plummets into the canal below. It later transpires that he has been stabbed to death. With no papers by which to identify the man, the detectives' investigation is hampered from the start. Suspecting that the victim may have come from continental Europe, Colbeck and Leeming take the case to France where a new railway is being built by a British contractor.

For nearly 1,000 years, from the destruction of temples and monasteries by Muslim invaders in the 11th and 12th centuries, followed by Hinduism’s increasing power, Buddhism vanished from the country of its origin. Though hugely influential throughout Asia, the religion was forgotten in India.

Here are the stories of nine great adventures and the lives of the men who took part in them. They pushed back the frontiers of man's knowledge of the world by their vision, courage, and sheer doggedness. They were very different people, from bold adventurers facing the unknown with enjoyment to careful, more scientific individuals. Their journeys are placed within their historical context, but also contain the words of the men themselves.

This is a story from the Great Explorers collection.

This is a story from the Great Explorers collection.

This is a story from the Great Explorers collection.

Former government minister Ralph Singh is the perpetual outsider: displaced, disillusioned, and now living in exile, Ralph reflects on his earlier life and the searing effects of colonialism. Ralph's constant estrangement sees him ever attempting to fit into various communities, only to find home in more transient spaces. Born on the tropical island of Isabella, he is one of West India's many "Mimic Men".

For decades, Gacalo and Mugdi have lived in Oslo, where they've led a peaceful, largely assimilated life and raised two children. Their beloved son, Dhaqaneh, however, is driven by feelings of alienation to jihadism in Somalia, where he kills himself in a suicide attack. The couple reluctantly offers a haven to his family. But on arrival in Oslo, their daughter-in-law cloaks herself even more deeply in religion, while her children hunger for the freedoms of their new homeland, a rift that will have lifealtering consequences for the entire family.