SMSA (Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts)Tom Keneally Centre Reading
Meet award-winning journalist and writer Claire Scobie in the Tom Keneally Centre, talking about her novel The Pagoda Tree, India and her inspirations.
FREE – Bookings are essential.
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‘Women’s stories are rarely told in history, nor particularly honoured. The Pagoda Tree offers a powerful, sensual perspective on a time of great transformation in India.’
— Sarah Macdonald, author of Holy Cow
‘A nuanced and sophisticated exploration of the socio-historical realities that are inevitable when cultures collide.’
— The Hoopla
About The Pagoda Tree
Maya dances like not other. She becomes the dance . . . Her dance can steal a man’s soul.
Tanjore, 1765. Maya plays among the towering granite temples of this ancient city in the heart of southern India. Like her mother before her, she is destined to become a devadasi, a dancer for the temple. She is instructed in dance, the mystical arts and lovemaking. It is expected she will be chosen as a courtesan for the prince himself.
But as Maya comes of age, India is on the cusp of change. She is forced to flee to the bustling port city of Madras, where East and West collide. Thomas Pearce, an ambitious young Englishman there to make his fortune, is entranced from the moment he first sees her dance. But their love is forbidden, and comes at enormous cost.
Weaving together the uneasy meeting of two cultures, The Pagoda Tree is a captivating story of love, loss and fate.
Guest Speaker
Claire Scobie is an award-winning journalist who has lived and worked in the UK, India and now Sydney, where she writes for the Telegraph, the Observer, and theSydney Morning Herald, among others. In 1997 she won the Catherine Pakenham Award as Best Woman Journalist of the year. Her first book, Last Seen in Lhasa, is a memoir based on her friendship with a Tibetan nun, and won the Dolman Best Travel Book Award in 2007. The Pagoda Tree is her second book.
Find out more at clairescobie.com
Find Claire Scobie on Twitter and on Facebook.
Claire also leads literary tours to India with Abercrombie & Kent, more details here (insert link).