India Calling - An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking

• Completely updated, this fourth edition of Frommer's India will help you plan the trip that's right for you, whether you're traveling to soak up India's spirituality, chill out on the beaches, or live like a king in the land of princes.
• Experience the best of India: Visit the Taj Mahal as well as the cave temples at Ajanta and Ellora, watch the moon rise from Pushkar Palace during the Pushkar Mela, raft down the Zanskar, bump into a Bollywood star at a top rated restaurant, and sleep in a former king's bed at a heritage property (castles, palaces, and forts) in Rajasthan. Also learn tips on safety, ettiquette, and the art of bargaining --including the real meaning behind the phrases "you pay what you like" and "just look, no buy."
• This guide is biannually updated (and personalized) by a small team of writers including Pippa de Bruyn, an award-winning journalist and travel writer; Dr. Keith Bain, who also has a doctorate in film; Niloufer Venkatraman, a Mumbai native who has a doctorate in anthropology; Shonar Joshi, a travel writer and reporter; and more. All are not afraid to speak their mind and give their opinions -- and share their passion for India.
• Frommer's India, 4e also includes 4 itineraries for exploring the country, including "North India Highlights in 16 Days" and "South India in 2 Weeks."

The Ephrussis were a grand banking family, as rich and respected as the Rothschilds, who “burned like a comet” in nineteenth-century Paris and Vienna society. Yet by the end of World War II, almost the only thing remaining of their vast empire was a collection of 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox.

The renowned ceramicist Edmund de Waal became the fifth generation to inherit this small and exquisite collection of netsuke. Entranced by their beauty and mystery, he determined to trace the story of his family through the story of the collection.

The netsuke—drunken monks, almost-ripe plums, snarling tigers—were gathered by Charles Ephrussi at the height of the Parisian rage for all things Japanese. Charles had shunned the place set aside for him in the family business to make a study of art, and of beautiful living. An early supporter of the Impressionists, he appears, oddly formal in a top hat, in Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. Marcel Proust studied Charles closely enough to use him as a model for the aesthete and lover Swann in Remembrance of Things Past.

Charles gave the carvings as a wedding gift to his cousin Viktor in Vienna; his children were allowed to play with one netsuke each while they watched their mother, the Baroness Emmy, dress for ball after ball. Her older daughter grew up to disdain fashionable society. Longing to write, she struck up a correspondence with Rilke, who encouraged her in her poetry.

The Anschluss changed their world beyond recognition. Ephrussi and his cosmopolitan family were imprisoned or scattered, and Hitler’s theorist on the “Jewish question” appropriated their magnificent palace on the Ringstrasse. A library of priceless books and a collection of Old Master paintings were confiscated by the Nazis. But the netsuke were smuggled away by a loyal maid, Anna, and hidden in her straw mattress. Years after the war, she would find a way to return them to the family she’d served even in their exile.

In The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal unfolds the story of a remarkable family and a tumultuous century. Sweeping yet intimate, it is a highly original meditation on art, history, and family, as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves.

After hard luck and heartbreak, Sunny finally finds a place to call home—in the middle of an Afghanistan war zone. There, the thirty-eight-year-old serves up her American hospitality to the expats who patronize her coffee shop, including a British journalist, a “danger pay” consultant, and a wealthy and well-connected woman. True to her name, Sunny also bonds with people whose language and landscape are unfamiliar to most Westerners, but whose hearts and souls are very much like our own: the maternal Halajan, who vividly recalls the days before the Taliban and now must hide a modern romance from her ultratraditional son; and Yazmina, a young Afghan villager with a secret that could put everyone’s life in jeopardy. In this gorgeous first novel, New York Times bestselling author Deborah Rodriguez paints a stirring portrait of a faraway place where—even in the fog of political and social conflict—friendship, passion, and hope still exist. 
 
Originally published as A Cup of Friendship
 
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