num_pages: 352
description: In the bestselling tradition of Running with Scissors and Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight a hilarious, affecting memoir of the authors upbringing in an ashram in India In 1980, when she is seven, the authors parents, 60s-holdover hippies, leave California for an ashram in a cobra- ridden, drought-stricken spot in India. Rachel is the only foreign child in a hundred-mile radius. The ashram is devoted to Meher Baba, best known as the guru to Pete Townshend and thus for having inspired some songs by The Who, for having kept a lifelong vow of silence, and for having coined the slogan, Dont worry, be happy. Cavorting through these pages are some wonderfully eccentric charactersincluding a holy madman permanently doubled over from years of stooping to collect invisible objects; a senile librarian who nightly sings scales outside Rachels window, only with grunts instead of notes; and a middle-aged male virgin who begs Rachel to critique his epic spiritual poems. Somehow, Rachel manages to keep her wits and humor about her when everyone else seems to have lost touch with reality. Astutely observed and laugh-out-loud funny, this astonishing debut memoir marks the arrival of a major new literary talent.
language: English
title: All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India
titlecomplete: All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India
genres: Biography, Memoir, India, Autobiography, Coming Of Age, Asia, Biography Memoir, Travel, Humor, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 796
publisher: Rodale Books