The Best of Brit Lit
A look at great reads from the editor of the Times Literary Supplement. This week: William Dalrymple dives deep into India mystical traditions, Roger Scruton defends hunting from animal rights activists, and Orhan Pamuk’s latest novel.
If you think that anyone is mad to believe in anything at all, the sacred prostitutes, Indian minstrels, idol-makers, and the nightly possessed in William Dalrymple's new book, Nine People, are among the maddest. TLS critic, Wendy Doniger, hails the author of "extraordinary travel books" about India, who this time has written a "glorious mixture of journalism, anthropology, history and history of religions." It shows us, through its stories of the suffering and sacrifice that are still the daily reality of many on the subcontinent, "religion responding to human life at its most extreme, and ugliest."
There are those, perhaps especially in England, who are more exercised by the suffering of animals than that of their fellow humans. Andrew Linzey goes a bit further than some in his belief that "animals are protected by principles which have an absolute force"—but does not convince the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, who lives on a farm and rides to hounds, and concludes that it is not just "the mouse in my kitchen and the rat in the barn" that need protecting from people, but people themselves: "not least from the prigs and puritans who dislike their way of life." Linzey, says Scruton, may be a humane observer of animals, but he is no student of literature. "Maybe he cannot bring himself to attend a meet of foxhounds; but he could at least have consulted the literature, from Plato and Xenophon to Turgenev, Sassoon, Masefield and Ortega y Gasset, devoted to the place of hunting in a virtuous life."
This month it is one of the TLS editor's happy tasks to hand over seven prizes for literary translation, the art or craft of which "is in good shape," according to our French and Italian editor, Adrian Tahourdin: "if as a nation of readers we in Britain remain insular or parochial, there is less excuse for that than ever." In a year dominated by prose and especially by fiction, one of the prizes goes to Margaret Jull Costa, for her version, made from the Spanish translation, of a novel originally written in Basque. Jonathan Keates also salutes this "inexhaustibly versatile" translator's work—this time, for her versions of novels by the great Portuguese writer José Maria Eça de Queiroz. Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel prizewinner and one-time contributor to the TLS, in his new novel (translated by Maureen Freely), reveals the "gilded life of Turkey's Westernized elite" and its segregation from "the impoverished and destitute majority"—those religion waits to embrace.
Get the best of The Beast delivered right to your inbox
By clicking “SUBSCRIBE” you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Plus: Check out Book Beast for more news on hot titles and authors and excerpts from the latest books.
Peter Stothard is the author of Thirty Days, a Downing Street diary of his time with British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the Iraq war and On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey Through Ancient Italy which will be published in January.
See more of our coverage in your search results.
Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.
Register below to read this article for free or subscribe
to unlock unlimited access to The Daily Beast.
Monthly
$1
First month then $5.99/month
Annual
$35
First year then $59.99/year
Premium
$79
First year then $119.99/year
*Substack access provided by the next business day, using your subscription email. Choosing the Premium plan constitutes your permission to share your subscription email with Substack and your agreement to Substack’s Privacy Policy.
Already have an account? Sign In
Looks like you already have a subscription!
You're all set!
Thanks for subscribing.