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158 pages

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Two Englishmen are travelling the dusty roads of 16th century India: Thomas Coryat, a physician and man of science, who comes to India to find a cure for his wife's leprosy in the famed medical library at Agra; and Brother Peter, known as Frog, who has come to convert the heathen to the True Faith. The friendship between them is full of strife, as is Akbar's Mogul Empire. Opposing armies are on the move, preparing to do battle with their fighting elephants and fire-camels. Thomas and Frog are caught up in the conflict, together with a troupe of dancers. Amongst the troupe is Bamian, a wickedly endearing dwarf and Mohini, a dancing-girl with whom Thomas falls in love.Bawdy, bloody, part tragedy, part comedy, Lord of the Dance, was winner of the BBC Bookshelf/Arrow First Novel Competition and was also a Booker Prize entry.Some reviews of Lord of the Dance:A marvellously readable, richly coloured adventure ... written with style, character and deft touches of philosophy, humour and irony. (Graham Lord, Sunday Express).Once every four or five years there comes along a novel which is just not well written, worthy or entertaining, but one which bears the stamp of greatness ... Lord of the Dance is going to become a modern classic. (John Hewitt, Telegraph & Argus).Astonishing imaginative brilliance. (Stuart Evans, The Times).The setting of the novel in the 16th century Mogul Empire of northern India is realised with a brilliance of imagination which is sustained throughout... This book is not just a winner, it is a significant literary discovery. (John Linklater, The Glasgow Herald).Lord of the Dance is funny, tragic, tender and bloody. One is moved to laugh and cry at almost every turn of the vividly embellished plot... Although set in the 16th century, a great deal of it is valid today. (Evening Times).

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Historical fiction

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Publié par	eBookPartnership.com
Date de parution	30 août 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781909270152
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0374€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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LORD OF THE DANCE
Robin Lloyd-Jones
© Robin Lloyd-Jones 1983
About the book
Two Englishmen are travelling the dusty roads of 16 th century India: Thomas Coryat, a physician and man of science, who comes to India to find a cure for his wife’s leprosy in the famed medical library at Agra; and Brother Peter, known as Frog, who has come to convert the heathen to the True Faith. The friendship between them is full of strife, as is Akbar’s Mogul Empire. Opposing armies are on the move, preparing to do battle with their fighting elephants and fire-camels. Thomas and Frog are caught up in the conflict, together with a troupe of dancers. Amongst the troupe is Bamian, a wickedly endearing dwarf and Mohini, a dancing-girl with whom Thomas falls in love. Bawdy, bloody, part tragedy, part comedy , Lord of the Dance , was winner of the BBC Bookshelf/Arrow First Novel Competition and was also a Booker Prize entry.
About the author
Robin Lloyd-Jones is an award-winning author who lives on the west coast of Scotland. After obtaining an MA in social anthropology at Cambridge University, he became a teacher and then an adviser in education. In addition to writing, his interests are mountaineering, sea kayaking, chess and travel. Robin was a part-time tutor in creative writing at Glasgow University and is a former president of the Scottish Association of Writers and of Scottish PEN International which campaigns on behalf of persecuted writers.
Robin spent six years of his childhood in India and much of the rural background and atmosphere of Lord of the Dance draws upon this experience. www.robinlloyd-jones.com
Some reviews of Lord of the Dance
A marvellously readable, richly coloured adventure … written with style, character and deft touches of philosophy, humour and irony. (Graham Lord, Sunday Express ).
Once every four or five years there comes along a novel which is just not well written, worthy or entertaining, but one which bears the stamp of greatness … Lord of the Dance is going to become a modern classic. (John Hewitt, Telegraph & Argus ).
Astonishing imaginative brilliance. (Stuart Evans, The Times ).
The setting of the novel in the 16 th century Mogul Empire of northern India is realised with a brilliance of imagination which is sustained throughout… This book is not just a winner, it is a significant literary discovery. (John Linklater, The Glasgow Herald ).
Lord of the Dance is funny, tragic, tender and bloody. One is moved to laugh and cry at almost every turn of the vividly embellished plot… Although set in the 16 th century, a great deal of it is valid today. ( Evening Times ).
Other books by Robin Lloyd-Jones
Argonauts of the Western Isles (Whittles Publishing, 2008) - Non-fiction. The author’s sea kayaking adventures on the west coast of Scotland.
Red Fox Running (Andersen Press, 2007) – A novel for 12+, set in the Arctic, looking at environmental issues. Short-listed for Heart of Hawick Children’s Book Award; long-list for Manchester Children’s Book Award.
Fallen Pieces of the Moon (Whittles Publishing, 2006) – An account of a kayak trip in Greenland.
Fallen Angels (Canongate Press, 1992) – A collection of short stories about the street children of South America . ‘ Unsurpassed mastery.... A compassionate, deeply moving rendition of some disturbing tales based upon reality. (Dr Maryanne Traylen, Resurgence Magazine ).
The Dreamhouse (Hutchinson, 1985) – a novel. A surrealist satire set in a remote 19 th century gold-rush town in Alaska. The arrival of a con-man turns the community upside down. A Booker Prize entry. 'Fantastic, funny and inventive, a tonic to read.' ( The Guardian ).
Where the Forest and Garden Meet (Kestrel, 1980) – children’s fiction (9-12). Short stories based on the author’s memories of a childhood in India.
The Sunlit Summit , a biography of W H Murray, the Scottish mountaineer, writer and conservationist will be published by Sandstone Press in 2013.
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Afterword
LORD OF THE DANCE
One
In all Christendom I have seen no highway to compare with this, the great highway in the heart of Akbar’s Mogul Empire four hundred miles of broad tree-lined avenue running from Lahore to Agra. In the shade of one of these trees I stretched out and rested my sore feet. The midday sun had reduced the flow of humanity along the great highway to a trickle. Buffalo rested in the fields, unyoked from their ploughs. The only sounds were a fly buzzing, a yearning flute, and Brother Peter snoring in his sleep. I had taken the usual precaution of sitting upwind of him, for Frog, as I have called him since our childhood days in Devon, always did sweat profusely.
The sun was in the sign of Libra, when all nature seems poised between the seasons, when day and night hang equally in the scales. It was the month named Kartika, the month of the Hindu New Year. It was what we foreigners, we white barbarians, call October. The monsoon rains were over, the rice harvest nearly in. At this time Lakshmi, the goddess of plenty, is prayed to above all others. And at this time, as the floods subside and bullock carts no longer sink axle-deep in mud, the season for military campaigns begins. For, although the Mogul Empire embraces the whole of northern India and exceeds the domain of our own gracious sovereign Queen Elizabeth by some twelvefold or more, Akbar seeks to push his boundaries wider still.
Three days ago Frog and I had heard the distant rumble of cannon-fire. It had lasted from dawn till dusk. A peasant surveying the broken mud walls of his fields had only shrugged when I asked who was slaughtering whom. Yes, an army had passed this way. Whence they came or whither they went he could not say. He only knew that, like the locusts, they had made passage through his countryside.
‘All armies are alike,’ he said. ‘Our granaries emptied, our carts commandeered, no women safe.’
But he did not complain. It was the karma of those of low caste to suffer such calamities. Wars, like floods, like the locusts, were to be expected and endured.
Frog twitched and moaned, his knees drawn up in the foetal position. I studied his bare feet. Scaled and horny, fissured, cracked and ingrained with dirt, they had conveyed him many a mile in the last eighteen months. His toenails were several hues of purple, brown and black; grey fungus and other mucilaginous substances grew between his toes. I marvelled at the fecundity of nature. Even Frog’s bottle of holy water had turned green and was thriving with aquatic life. Beside him were his shoes, his staff, his Bible, his framed picture of the Virgin Mary with her golden halo, and a copy of the Koran, translated from Arabic into Latin. Inside the cover I had written: ‘Presented by your friend Thomas Coryat on the occasion of our departure from the shores of England for the land of the Great Mogul, May 1575.’
I had hoped that my gift might help Frog to a better understanding of the Muslims among whom we would be moving. But no; he used it to fuel his scorn, his hatred of the Antichrist, learning by heart such passages as might confound the enemy through the words of their own prophet. It is the same with us physicians and chirurgeons. We fit the evidence to whatever theory it suits us to believe.
A flat oval insect emerged from the region of Frog’s groin. Fleas, bugs, the burrowing fly Frog is a generous and impartial host. The bug clambered on to his hand, which was tattooed with the Crusaders’ fitched cross, the proud badge of those who have visited the Holy City of Jerusalem. The ship which took us to the Holy Land had been packed with pilgrims, most of them, like Frog, indulging in orgies of credulity. At Venice, then at Rhodes and again at Jerusalem, Frog parted with good money to gawp at three different versions of ‘The One, True, Unique and Miraculously Preserved Holy Crown of Thorns’.
The bug now tackled the vast desert of Frog’s stomach and the mountainous folds of his grey cassock, which were not unlike the dry, brigand-infested wastes we had crossed before descending into the plains of northern India. By which time I could not help noticing that, as Frog’s ability to speak Hindustani improved, so did his capacity for annoying all and sundry by preaching what they had no wish to hear. Descending from rough cloth to smooth skin on Frog’s neck, the bug encountered another of its kind. Their mating habits, I discovered, were most interesting. The male takes up a position diagonally across the body of the female, instead of at the rear as is customary in animals. Be watchful, little bugs, or you shall burn. For Aristotle says that flies and other insects spontaneously generate from putrefying fluids. And what Aristotle says cannot be wrong – according to the Church.
Perhaps the female would lay her eggs upon Frog’s person. Perhaps whole generations of bugs had lived and died upon his body. Whereas I scratch and curse when visited thus, Frog never seems to notice a fact that he attributes to the power of prayer and I to the thickness of his skin. But supposing these bugs could hold philosophical discourse with one another, what matters might they not debate? Is Frog the centre of the universe? Is there life beyond Frog? And the orthodox would declare that Frog fell from space and persecute those who claimed that there never was a time when he did not exist.
The male bug ran across Frog’s lips, which shuddered fleshily with each expulsion of air. Frog averages 22,636 breaths a day, by my calculation. I have often pondered as to why we breathe at all. At the University of Padua they taught us that we take in air to ventilate the body, for there is some source of heat, probably the liver or the heart, which makes constant cooling necessary. The bug reached Frog’s left nostril and began to explore. A hand came up and squashed it into a brownish smear. What mess would