Additional Book Information
Series: NYRB Classics
ISBN: 9780940322257
Pages: 320
Publication Date: January 31, 2000
Hindoo Holiday
by J. R. Ackerley, introduction by Eliot Weinberger
In the 1920s, the young J. R. Ackerley spent several months in India as the personal secretary to the maharajah of a small Indian principality. In his journals, Ackerley recorded the Maharajah’s fantastically eccentric habits and riddling conversations, and the odd shambling day-to-day life of his court. Hindoo Holiday is an intimate and very funny account of an exceedingly strange place, and one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century travel literature.
Praise
One of those books of rare occurrence which stands upon a superior and totally distinct plane of artistic achievement...It is a work of high literary skill and very delicate aesthetic perception and it deals with a character and a milieu which are novel and radiantly delightful. What more, in an imperfect world, has one the right to expect?
— Evelyn Waugh
His humour is the humour of pity and love. He is an artist of the understanding.
— V.S. Pritchett