The Whole Country Was One Robe

The Robe was the author's most successful book, going through multiple printings and remaining in the number one slot on the New York Times best seller list for almost a year. It was made into a film in which Richard Burton was the lead actor and which was nominated for a number of Academy awards. The book is a fictional telling of the story of the aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus through the experiences of the Roman tribune Marcellus Gallio, who carried out the crucifixion, and his Greek slave Demetrius. Gallio wins the Robe through a toss of the dice and it comes to have an impact on his thinking and his life. Lloyd C. Douglas was an American minister and author born in Indiana in 1877. He was married and had two children. He did not write his first novel until the age of 50 but was considered to be one of the most popular writers of his time. His works usually had a moral and religious tone. Two of his best known works were The Robe and The Big Fisherman, which were made into major motion pictures. The Robe, written in 1942, sold over two million copies in hardcover alone. It held the number one position on the New York Times Best Seller list for over a year and remained on the list for an additional two years. The film version of The Robe hit the screen in 1953 and starred Richard Burton.

The hermit-monk Ryokan, long beloved in Japan both for his poetry and for his character, belongs in the tradition of the great Zen eccentrics of China and Japan. His reclusive life and celebration of nature and the natural life also bring to mind his younger American contemporary, Thoreau. Ryokan's poetry is that of the mature Zen master, its deceptive simplicity revealing an art that surpasses artifice. Although Ryokan was born in eighteenth-century Japan, his extraordinary poems, capturing in a few luminous phrases both the beauty and the pathos of human life, reach far beyond time and place to touch the springs of humanity.

Folkeeventyr hovedsaglig fra de slaviske lande

"Poised to spark debate among scholars of religious studies and other disciplines, Colors of the Robe sheds new light on the Sri Lankan Buddhist universe of ethics and politics and, more important, suggests innovative directions for the global study of religion, identity, culture, politics, and violence. In a volume that surpasses other studies in tracking, identifying, and locating Sri Lankan Buddhism in its sectarian, ethnic, cultural, social, and political constructions, Ananda Abeysekara lays down a challenge to postcolonial and postmodern theory. He argues that although criticisms have undermined the orientalist constructions of culture, they cannot help us understand, let alone theorize, the emergence of contemporary authoritative discourses that define distinctions involving religion and violence, identity and difference. Supplanting that aim, Abeysekara illuminates the shifting configurations that characterize the relations connected with postcolonial religious identity and culture."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

After graduating from college, Marsha Low left home to spend eighteen years as an Ananda Marga yogic nun, living in countries throughout the Middle and Far East, Australasia, and Eastern Europe. After undergoing training with the organization, she taught meditation and yoga, opened schools, and performed social work and relief projects. Often skirting the law to further her organizations mission and raise money for it, she came face to face withamong other thingsgun-toting border guards in Cyprus, the Russian KGB, and misunderstanding and rejection as a female spiritual teacher in the Middle East. In India, she faced harassment from government officials intent upon hunting down foreign members of her blacklisted organization. In The Orange Robe: My Eighteen Years as a Yogic Nun, the author also relates incidents from her family life growing up, her dreams, and the issues that she had to deal with upon returning to ordinary life. From her first encounter with the group to her eventual disillusionment with it and the reconciliation with her family, The Orange Robe chronicles the dangers, triumphs, misadventures, and heartaches she experienced on her journey. It also provides a unique window into the behavior and psychology of Ananda Marga and its founder, Shrii Shrii Anandamurti.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • We all have dreams—things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi’s dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran. Nafisi’s account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense. Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice. Praise for Reading Lolita in Tehran “Anyone who has ever belonged to a book group must read this book. Azar Nafisi takes us into the vivid lives of eight women who must meet in secret to explore the forbidden fiction of the West. It is at once a celebration of the power of the novel and a cry of outrage at the reality in which these women are trapped. The ayatollahs don’ t know it, but Nafisi is one of the heroes of the Islamic Republic.”—Geraldine Brooks, author of Nine Parts of Desire