A Goddess in the Stones

'Norman Lewis's best travel book, beautifully written in an intelligent way and containing information about areas and tribes of India that I have never read about elsewhere' Nicholas Coleridge, Literary Review

---

'The great virtue of Norman Lewis as a writer is that he can make the most boring things interesting; whatever he is describing - whether it is a rickshaw driver, an alcohol-crazed elephant, or a man defecating by the side of the road - Lewis's senses are awake for sounds or smells, and he can make you think twice about scenes you have seen ten thousand times before. He has a good eye for the odd, the weird and the curious, and the book is full of some of the strangest facts imaginable: the tribe which marries ten-year-old boys to thirty-year-old women; the method of training a sloth bear to dance; the market where you can buy herbal remedies to hasten your enemy's menopause or procure the growth of a serpent in her intestines; philtres to spread or extinguish the fires of love; a sap which, painted on the skin, ensures invisibility against tigers...a joy to read' William Dalrymple, Spectator 'A marvellous travel book' Independent 'The best travel writer of our age, if not since Marco Polo' Auberon Waugh