Little of this and that:

1. Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud by Sun Shuyun, published by HarperCollins, pp 256, Rs 795

2. The Greatness Guide: One of the World’s Top Success Coaches Shares His Secrets to Get to Your Best by Robin Sharma, published by HarperCollins, pp 272, Rs 300

3. Road to Katmandu by Patrick Marnham, published by Tauris Parks, pp 160, Rs 575

4. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco, published by Vintage books, pp 464, Rs 750

5. Keeping Up with Magda by Isla Dewar, published by Headline books, pp 224, Rs 350

What the books are about:

Ten thousand miles...

Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud is a beautifully written account of Sun Shuyun’s journey to retrace the steps of one of the most popular figures in Chinese history — the monk Xuanzang, who travelled to India searching for true Buddhism. Xuanzang should be known as one of the world’s great heroes. His travels across Asia to bring true Buddhism back to China are legendary. Yet he is unknown to most of us and even to most Chinese, whose knowledge of Buddhist history has been eradicated by decades of Communist rule. Sun Shuyun was determined to follow in his footsteps, to discover more about Xuanzang and restore his fame. She decided to retrace his journey from China to India and back, an adventure that in the 8th Century took Xuanzang 18 years and led him across 118 kingdoms, an adventure that opened up the east and west of Asia to each other — and to us.

The greatness guide

Robin Sharma, one of the world’s top success coaches and author of the international bestseller The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, offers 10 high-impact lessons for success. The Greatness Guide is a strikingly powerful and enormously practical handbook that will inspire you to get to world class in both your personal and professional life. It contains a proven formula that will help you meet your highest potential and live an extraordinary life. Discover the personal practices of spectacularly successful people.

Road to Katmandu

In the 1960s and ‘70s, the overland route from Europe to Asia became popular with disillusioned Westerners seeking what they saw as the paradise of the East. Their journeys are now the stuff of travel legend. Road to Katmandu is the story of Patrick Marnham’s own pilgrimage from Turkey to Nepal in 1968. He travelled over 3,000 miles, passing through Ankara to Ararat, Tehran and Mashad, Herat, Kandahar and Kabul, Peshawar, Lahore and Varanasi... before reaching Katmandu. His journey is a kaleidoscopic blend of tortuous train journeys and lethal truck drives; wild deserts, mountains and isolated villages. At heart this is the story of a generation that was escaping from the routine of conventional life and of how it found — or lost — its way. It provides an alluring insight into the nature of the ‘hippie trail’ and of those who forged it, before cheap air travel shrank the world. Road to Katmandu is an extraordinary testimony to the seductive beauty of the overland trail and a tribute to those who formed its ragamuffin cavalcade — a travel classic.

The mysterious flame...

Yambo, a sixty-ish rare book dealer who lives in Milan has suffered a loss of memory; not the kind of memory neurologists call ‘semantic’ (Yambo remembers all about Julius Caesar and can recite every poem he has ever read), but rather his ‘autobiographical’ memory: he no longer knows his own name, doesn’t recognise his wife or his daughters, doesn’t remember anything about his parents or his childhood. His wife, who is at his side as he slowly begins to recover, convinces him to return to his family home. Yambo promptly retreats to the sprawling attic, cluttered with boxes of newspapers, comics, records, photo albums and adolescent diaries. There, he relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Cyrano de Bergerac. As he recovers his memory, two voids remain shrouded in fog: a terrible event he experienced during the resistance, and the vague image of a girl whom he loved at 16, then lost. But a relapse occurs. Now in a coma, his memories run wild, and life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel.

Keeping up with Magda

This is a 20/20 Edition — Headline 20th Anniversary Edition. This is the classic novel from the No 1 Scottish bestseller. In the Scottish fishing village of Mareth, everyone knows everything about each other — and what they don’t know they assume; the villagers live against a constantly changing backdrop of elaborate scheming and sexual innuendo. At the hub of this world is the Ocean Cafe, run by tousle-haired, fortysomething Magda, who makes grown men eat their greens, won’t serve customers she doesn’t like, and loves her children and their father with a passion. When Jessie Tate, devastated by tragedy, rents the flat above the cafe in an escape from the city, her dream of peace and solitude is shattered by the rock ‘n’ roll music that thuds through her floor. But perhaps a dose of life in an intimate, colourful and utterly self-absorbed community is just what Jessie needs to break free of her ghosts...

Information courtesy: UNITED BOOKS, Ganesh Man Singh building, Northfield Cafe ph: 4229 512; Bluebird stores in Lazimpat & Tripureshwore, ph: 4245 726; Momo’s and More, Old Baneshwor; Himalayan Java; Saturday Cafe, Bouddha; Namaste Supermarket in Pulchowk, ph: 5525 017