It’s a fairly common experience: before you visit a place, you read up on it, study its history and culture, plan ahead and prepare … and then when you get there, you realize that no amount of study could have prepared you for the reality that confronts you, the glorious surprises of travel at its best.
But what happens when a true scholar, with peerless knowledge of a place and its people, arrives for a lengthy visit in a place he’s studied for decades? Well, if he’s as open and alive to wonder as David Shulman, the result is a travel diary like no other. Spring, Heat, Rains chronicles a seven-month sojourn in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, marrying Shulman’s lifetime of learning with his joyful astonishment at the details of daily life in one of the world’s most ancient societies. With Shulman, author of the critically acclaimed Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine, as our guide, we meet betel-nut vendors, hear singers and epic poets, and clamber over ancient temples. We endure the crippling heat of summer and the desperately desired—but frustratingly inescapable—monsoon rains that follow. And we fall deeply, completely in love with an unforgettable place and the life of its people. Lyrical and lush, Spring, Heat, Rains will enchant anyone who has ever dreamed of India.
Read the press release.