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Hardcover The Red Letters: My Father's Enchanted Period Book

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ISBN: 1560256281

ISBN13: 9781560256281

The Red Letters: My Father's Enchanted Period

Name: Yet another wonderful book by Ved Mehta
Item: The Red Letters: My Father&#39;s Enchanted Period (Continents of Exile)
Rating: 5
Author: Thriftbooks.com User

By Ved Mehta

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Book Overview

The story has its origins in the sixties, when Mehta by chance finds his father weeping uncontrollably on his mother's shoulder during a New York dinner party. As a result, the son begins to unravel a family mystery that takes him on a painful and revealing voyage into his father's British past in Simla, the magical hill station. Step-by-step, he is forced to confront his father's passionate clandestine affair with Rasil, an exquisite beauty who in her teens was abducted from her poor family and raped. She was subsequently rescued by a Hindu philanthropist, only to end up trapped in an abusive marriage to a rich businessman. Mehta's exploration of his father's love affair proves painful, as the son realizes that the entanglement, a passing episode in sixty-one years of a loving marriage, had shattering psychological side effects on his mother--a close friend of Rasil's--and also on his own life. The Red Letters is Mehta's masterpiece, a work of extraordinary intensity that perfectly re-creates the exotic, closed world of British India. This description may be from another edition of this product.

Format:Hardcover

Language:English

ISBN:1560256281

ISBN13:9781560256281

Release Date:September 2004

Publisher:Nation Books

Length:190 Pages

Weight:0.90 lbs.

Dimensions:0.9" x 5.9" x 8.4"

Related Subjects

Arts & Literature Asia Authors Biographical Biographies Biographies & History Biography & History England Europe Historical

Customer Reviews

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Rated 5 stars
Yet another wonderful book by Ved Mehta

By Thriftbooks.com User, October 29, 2005

Warning: If The Red Letters is your first Ved Mehta book, it is only the beginning. Reading a book by Mehta is like trying to eat just one bite of Swiss chocolate. It's not enough. You'll have to read another, and then another, till they're all read. And by the way, don't be surprised if you find yourself booking a trip to India before you're finished, for your curiosity about that intriguing country will be severely provoked...

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Rated 4 stars
A Father, A Son, And Mother Memory

By Thriftbooks.com User, October 23, 2005

About a fourth of the way into this graceful memoir, and just before he starts to unfold the tale-within-a-tale concerning the eponymous 'red letters', author-narrator Ved Mehta admits to a moment of agonizing self-doubt: "In writing a series of books about myself and my family, among other things, with the title Continents of Exile, I have often been torn between loyalty to my family and loyalty to my craft, to which any...

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