Hindoo Holiday

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.

by J.R. Ackerley, introduction by Eliot Weinberger

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