Has William Dalrymple written the new 'Canterbury Tales'?

Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, author, historian and columnist William Dalrymple is a committed and perfectly fashioned Indophile.

But is Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, a distillation of 25 years of exploring India, Pakistan and the Middle East, "a modern Indian Canterbury Tales," as the author himself has described the book?

We haven't read it yet, but we certainly don't doubt Dalrymple's qualifications. If you've ever read him or heard him speak, you know Dalrymple's intelligence is just as sharp as his sense of humor. "Nine Lives" explores traditional forms of religious life "with an almost biblical simplicity." Among its themes:

• A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet -- then spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the violence by hand-printing the best prayer flags in India.
• A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve to death.
• A woman leaves her job and middle-class family in Calcutta to find unexpected love and fulfillment living as a Tantric skull feeder in a remote cremation ground.
• A prison warden from Kerala becomes, for two months of each year, a temple dancer and is worshipped as a deity.
• An illiterate goat herd from Rajasthan keeps alive an ancient 4,000-line sacred epic that he still knows by heart.
• A devadasi -- or temple prostitute -- initially resists her own path into sex work, yet pushes both her daughters into a trade she now regards as a sacred calling. (Read Dalrymple's article on devadasis for "The New Yorker".)

Dalrymple lives and works in New Delhi that's why his book launches in the capital are always very well attended. Anindita Ghose brings back a chunk of the lively action (and a glimpse of the author dancing!) in her article When Dalrymple Danced for "Mint" newspaper. And Nilanjana Roy for the Business Stanard has the more intellectual account.