Ark Minus Noah
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: May 3, 2005
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9780007136322
Subjects: Biography: general; Literature: Texts; India; Biography/Autobiography
Description: Editorial Review

"A charming, moving memoir of a pastoral Kashmiri childhood. Peter Hanley had British Indian parents but was raised single-handedly, with his brother, by his mother in the luxuriant valley of Kashmir, existing between two castes and classes, half-respectable, half-suspect as a family, bolstered by an Admirable Crichton of a steward in the shape of the magnificent Resha, one of the stars of this delicious memoir. Ark Minus Noah is principally a memoir of childhood delight, shadowed spasmodically by the incursion of various adult clouds. It's alternately charming, moving and amusing, evocative of the place and the time in a gently overwhelming way. Hanley writes beautifully about the natural world (the British colonists there were always rhapsodic about the place because it seemed to them like an idealized pastoral England) and, amongst other things, this book has the best writing about ducks you are ever likely to encounter...It is reminiscent of My Family and Other Animals, albeit relocated to the foothills of the Himalayas."


About the Author: Peter Hanley was born in London in 1949 and received a thoroughly alternative education in the wilds of Kashmir. He has since moved to Delhi where he works as a critic and journalist.
Table of contents: label: PROLOGUE
title: "For men han ever a likerous appetyt / On lower thing to parfourne hir delyt ... " -- Chaucer; label: CHAPTER ONE
title: ONCE UPON A TIME :  "Who has not heard of the ‘Vale of Cashmere...’" -- Thomas Moore; label: CHAPTER TWO
title: JUST LIKE PEOPLE : "What shulde I seyn? of foules every kinde..." -- Chaucer; label: CHAPTER THREE
title: HAMLET THE LAMBLET :  "Is not thilke the mery moneth of May..." -- Spencer; label: CHAPTER FOUR
title: PERCEPTIONS PERIPATETIC : "To use language appropriate to this volume..." -- Mrs Beeton; label: CHAPTER FIVE
title: CHARACTERS SYMPATHETIC : "For out of olde feldes, as men seith..." -- Chaucer; label: CHAPTER SIX
title: RED ROCK FARM : "My walls outside must have some flowers..." -- Wm. Henry Davies; label: CHAPTER SEVEN
title: THE BEAR BEHIND : "Welcome grave stranger, to our green retreats..." -- Sir Walter Scott; label: CHAPTER EIGHT
title: TUFTEESH,  MY DEAR WATSON! : "Eliminate the impossible, and  whatever remains..." -- Sherlock Holmes; label: CHAPTER NINE
title: CHANGING GUARD : "There is no body but eats and drinks..." -- Chinese Proverb; label: CHAPTER TEN
title: WHAT’S YOUR POISON? : "He myghte neither steppe ne stonde er he his staf hadde..." -- Langland; label: CHAPTER ELEVEN
title: NOW TELL ME, PETER : "Wel bourded!' quod the duck, `by my hat...!" -- Chaucer; label: CHAPTER TWELVE
title: COME ALL YE FAITHFUL : "The moot is of Mercy the manoir aboute..." -- Langland; label: CHAPTER THIRTEEN
title: BATTLE AND TRUCE WITH PATRIARCHS : "The beloved of the Almighty are..." -- Sheikh Saadi; label: CHAPTER FOURTEEN
title: KABALIS : "A child without a grandmother..." -- Kashmiri Proverb; label: CHAPTER FIFTEEN
title: SHOOTING BRAKES : "The very first principle to be impressed upon the mind..." -- Hints on Shooting, 1887; label: CHAPTER SIXTEEN
title: GUNPOWDER, FORESKINS, BEEF & DAL : "The mat takes a beating for  the flea’s offences" -- Kashmiri Proverb; label: CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
title: MUDDLESOME MANDALAS : "He who partakes of boiled barley gruel ... cow's urine ... liquid cowdung..." DharmaShastra; label: CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
title: THE WRONG END OF THE STICK : "There is a destiny that makes us brothers..." -- Edwin Markham; label: CHAPTER NINETEEN
title: SNAFFLING SERPENTS : "What is life if full of care / We have no time to stand and stare" -- Wm. Henry Davies; label: CHAPTER TWENTY
title: REPRISE : THE CANON THAT WAS : "And think, this heart, all evil shed away..." -- Rupert Brooke