3 Review(s)

In this volume the author experiments with monologues and narrative verse. These dramatic pieces are often prized out of dark and unknown crevices of history. He bares the souls of his protagonists and in the same breath unfolds a story. A young student fleeing to Jaffna and Tel Aviv from Nazi Pogroms explains how he took to Hebrew. A Bethlehem shepherd answers queries about the adoring Magi; whom he had seen as an urchin. A Ghana scholar is haunted by nightmares, because he avoided any mention of slavery in his thesis on the history of cocoa. A disciple of Muhammad Ahmad, the notorious Mehdi of Sudan, recalls his patron, as does a disciple of Lord Buddha, who takes off from the text of the Sermon. The volume bears testimony to Daruwalla’s scholarship, his wide range of interests and his travels.