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Ratings: ★★★★★ (4.9/5)
Genre: Travel Writing, Religion, Spirituality, Biography, Anthropology, Indian History, Non-Fiction.

Book Review:
William Dalrymple's ''Nine Lives'' is a masterful and deeply moving return to the travel writing genre that first made his name. In this extraordinary book, he ventures across the Indian subcontinent to find not monuments or historical sites, but people—nine remarkable individuals whose lives are dedicated to the sacred.

Each chapter of ''Nine Lives'' is a beautifully crafted portrait of a person following a distinct religious path. We meet a Buddhist monk who once fought the Chinese in Tibet and now spends his days printing prayer flags in a remote corner of Ladakh. We encounter a Jain nun who must witness her closest friend undertake the terrifyingly austere ritual of sallekhana, a fast unto death. There is a devadasi, a temple dancer dedicated to a goddess, whose life is upended by modernity; a woman possessed by a goddess in rural Rajasthan; a Sufi mystic; and a young Naxalite revolutionary who stumbles into violence.

Dalrymple listens to their stories with profound empathy and respect, allowing their voices to shine through his elegant, luminous prose. He weaves together history, anthropology, and journalism to create a rich tapestry of faith in contemporary India. The book explores the immense pressures faced by these ancient traditions in a nation hurtling towards modernization and globalization. Each story is a testament to the resilience of faith and the enduring power of the sacred, but also to the tragic costs of change.

Winner of the 2010 Asia House Award for Asian Literature and longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, ''Nine Lives'' is a triumph. It is a wise, compassionate, and utterly captivating book that illuminates the soul of India in a way that few others have. This is travel and nature writing at its very finest.