Synopses & Reviews
Fascinating and full of detail, this story of Katy Gardner's life in a Bangladeshi village accessible and easy to read at many different levels. For anthropologists, it provides an essential account of starting research in someone else's society. For pleasure, it reads as a fine novel, and as a piece of travel writing, it is evocative and absorbing. Katy Gardner writes about the friends she made, the characters she met, the rituals she witnessed, about Islam as practiced in that village and about women living in Purdah. She writes about trying, as a Western woman, to live the life of the village women. Her book is alive and memorable. The first edition was published by Virago and has been out of print since 1993.
Review
'Beautifully and simply written ... the characters emerge in all their humanity, frailty and humour. Gardner's approach is refreshingly honest ... [she] neither patronizes nor glamourizes the people of Talukpar but repays their trust by conveying their lives and experiences with dignity and respect. Songs At The River's Edge is a jewel of a book and the memory of it will stay long in the reader's mind.' --New Internationalist 'In reading [it], you experience a profound sense of entering another community and seeing it from the inside. Gardners evocative description[s] and her ability to convey the emotional intensity of its people make this a memorable book.' --Literary Review
Synopsis
Katy Gardners account of her fifteen-month stay in the small Bangladeshi village of Talukpur has become a classic study of rural life in South Asia. Through a series of beautifully crafted narratives, the villagers and their stories are brought vividly to life and the authors role as an outsider sensitively conveyed in her descriptions of the warm friendships she makes. Above all Songs at the River's Edge is written from a deep respect of Bangladesh and its country.
Synopsis
The author's account of her 18 months in a Bangladeshi village, living with the villagers, absorbing their life and culture.
Synopsis
The author's account of her 18 months in a Bangladeshi village, living with the villagers, absorbing their life and culture.
Synopsis
New expanded edition of a classic anthropology title that examines ethnicity as a dynamic and shifting aspect of social relations.
About the Author
Katy Gardner lectures in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex and is the author of several books including, Global Migrants: Local Lives : Travel and Transformation in Rural Bangladesh (1995) and, with David Lewis, Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge (Pluto Press 1996).
Table of Contents
Foreword--
1. September Arrival
2. The Lives that Allah Gives
3. Hushnia gets married
4. A Woman's Place
5. The Lives that Allah Takes
6. Roukea buys a new Sari
7. Stories of the Spirits
8. Storms
9. Abdullah seeks a Cure
10 Alim Ullah goes to Saudi
11. Ambia`s story
12 November departure