The Age of Kali : Travels and Encounters in India

William Dalrymple, who wrote so magically about India in City of Djinns, returns to the country in a series of remarkable essays that capture the extraordinary contradictions of modern India.

Featured in these pages are 15-year-old guerrilla girls and dowager Maharanis; flashy Bombay drinks parties and violent village blood feuds; a group of vegetarian terrorists intent on destroying India's first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet; and a palace where port and cigars are still carried to guests on a miniature silver steam train. Dalrymple meets such figures as Imran Khan and Benazir Bhutto, and witnesses the macabre nightly offering to the bloodthirsty goddess Parashakti – She Who Is Seated on a Throne of Five Corpses.

He experiences caste massacres in the badlands of Bihar and dines with a drug baron on the North-West Frontier; he discovers such oddities as the terrorist apes of Jaipur and the shrine where Lord Krishna is said to make love every night to his 16,108 wives and 64,732 milkmaids. A fascinating journey through a land of beauty, violence, and astonishing diversity.