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
$18.95
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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