The Invisibles: A Tale of the Eunuchs of India - Rilegato

Jaffrey, Zia

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0679415777 ISBN 13: 9780679415770

Casa editrice: Pantheon Books, 1996

Riassunto

In 1984, Zia Jaffrey traveled to Delhi, and there glimpsed a group of cross-dressing men who had walked, uninvited and unannounced, into a wedding. They sang out of tune, hurled insults at the guests, and were finally paid to leave. She learned that these often-castrated, elusive figures were known as the hijras - "neither male nor female" - or the eunuchs, of India. They existed in thousands in every major city, were tolerated yet reviled, thought to bring good luck to newlyweds and newborns, yet also called extortionists and kidnappers.
Jaffrey set off on a journey to understand the forces of caste, poverty, sexual ambiguity, and the tradition itself that had allowed the hijras to persist into the modern age. In an investigation that points to her own sense of "otherness" in relation to Indian culture - she was born in New York of Indian extraction - Jaffrey delved into the mysteries of the hijras' closed world, uncovering details about their past, their daily lives, and their complex social structures.
In this spellbinding book - at once travelogue, history, interview, and fiction - Jaffrey invents a hybrid voice to match her subject, as she meets journalists, police commissioners, detectives, and doctors and tries to trace the hijras' tradition through layers and layers of obfuscation and denial, as well as through Hindu, Muslim, and British history. She is drawn into a labyrinthine network of connections, coverups, and contradictions as mysterious as India itself.

Su questo libro

Dalla seconda/terza di copertina:

ng book--part travelogue, part history--about eunuchs in India today. They are both reviled and accepted, not officially acknowledged but a constant topic of conversation, believed to bring good luck to newlyweds and newborns but accused of prostitution and pederasty. (NIA)

Product Description:

Book by Jaffrey Zia

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Pantheon Books
• Data di pubblicazione: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0679415777
• ISBN 13: 9780679415770
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 293