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Opening with an incisive essay from Peter C. Newman, Ondaatje’s story culminates in a provocative final chapter that examines the abuse of paper in the economic world, an abuse that could see the human empire, built on paper, about to go up in flames. A unique philosophical investigation from one of the world’s most respected writers, philanthropists and financiers, The Power of Paper will change the way you see your books, your bills, your future.
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Leonard Woolf was born in London in 1880. He spent five years at Trinity College, Cambridge —probably the most formative of his life—where he began lasting friendships with men such as Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes. In 1904, Woolf applied to join the home civil service but failed the exam. Instead, he was sent to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as a cadet in the Ceylon civil service, joining the small group of white administrators who ruled the colony. There he remained for nearly seven years.
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The Man-Eater of Punanai is a fascinating story of a past rediscovered through a remarkable journey to one of the most exotic countries of the world – Sri Lanka. Full of drama and history, it not only relives the incredible story of a man-eating leopard that terrorized the tiny village of Punanai in the early part of the century, but also allows the author to come to terms with the ghost of his charismatic but tyrannical father.
More than a simple tale of adventure, the story is the revelation of a colourful but troubled past – a charmed life that abruptly ended when the author was sent to school in England, away from the security of childhood and the family he loved so much.
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Sindh Revisited is the remarkable story of the author’s fascination with the early life of Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890). It is the story of an incredible journey, too – deep into the heart of British India, and the India and Sindh of today.
The very name of Sir Richard Burton conjures up images of adventure. His search for the source of the Nile with John Manning Speke contributed to his being the best-known traveller of the nineteenth century. Burton was an outstanding orientalist, archaeologist, linguist, anthropologist, and a controversial diplomat.
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In a series of experiences between 1856 and 1877, several British-born explorers tried to unravel the mystery of the source of the Nile. This river, the longest in the world, flowed through the desert, bringing life in its floodwater every year. Where did all this water come from? The Sudd (Arabic for obstacle) a huge, papyrus-clogged swamp, thwarted earlier attempts to follow the river upstream. Richard Francis Burton, who led the 1856 expedition, pursued Ptolemy’s image of two great lakes and a mountain range (the Mountains of the Moon) from which the Nile flowed, avoiding the Sudd and heading inland from the East African coast.
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“Something, or something awful or something wonderful was certain to happen on every day in this part of Africa . Every morning when you woke it was exciting as though you were going to compete in a downhill ski race or drive a bobsled on a fast run. Something, you knew, would happen and usually before eleven o’clock. I never knew of a morning in Africa when I woke that I was not happy.”
Ernest Hemingway, True at First light.
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