Book Launch for Kathmandu by Thomas Bell

Please join us for a book launch and lecture by Thomas Bell on Kathmandu (forthcoming from Haus Publishing, April 2016).
Prof. David Gellner will give an introduction and chair the Q & A session after the lecture. The event is free and open to all, and will be followed by a reception and book signing.
Proceeds from booksales on the night will be donated to CITTA a charity that promotes health, education and economic development in deprived communities.

KATHMANDU

 by Thomas Bell

 Kathmandu is the greatest city of the Himalaya; a place where unique cultural practices that died out in India a thousand years ago have survived. It is a carnival of sexual license and hypocrisy, a jewel of world art, a hotbed of communist revolution, a paradigm of failed democracy, a case study in bungled Western intervention, and an environmental catastrophe.

 Closed to the outside world until 1951 and trapped in a medieval time warp, Kathmandu’s rapid modernisation is an extreme version of what is happening in many traditional societies. The many layers of the city’s development are reflected in the successive generations of its gods and goddesses, witches and ghosts, the comforts of caste, the ethos of aristocracy and kingship, and the lately destabilising spirits of consumer aspiration, individuality, egalitarianism, communism and democracy. Erudite, entertaining and accessible, it is the fascinating chronicle of a unique city.

Thomas Bell studied at Oxford and the Courtauld Institute of Art before moving to Kathmandu to cover the civil war in Nepal for the Daily Telegraph and The Economist. He was later Southeast Asia correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.