In December 1991, Lapierre's bestseller The City of Joy will be released as a major motion picture, generating tremendous new interest and excitement for an extraordinary book--now specially enhanced for this event. It is an epic story about the soul of all humanity--a lesson in tenderness and hope for all people for all times. 8-page insert. Prime Time Live feature with Diane Sawyer.
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In December 1991, Lapierre's bestseller The City of Joy will be released as a major motion picture, generating tremendous new interest and excitement for an extraordinary book--now specially enhanced for this event. It is an epic story about the soul of all humanity--a lesson in tenderness and hope for all people for all times. 8-page insert. Prime Time Live feature with Diane Sawyer.
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Seller's Description:
Very good; Collectible. FIRST PRINTING WITH A FULL NUMBER 1-10 PRINT LINE RUNS BETWEEN VERY GOOD TO LIKE NEW. DJ OVER SOLID HARD COVER IS WHOLE WITH GOOD COLORS, NO SUN FADING OR STICKERS SEEN, AND MINIMAL TO TINY CHAFING SHELVING FLAWS. OWNER SIGNATURE IN BLUE PEN IS OBSCURED BEHIND FRONT FLAP ON INSIDE COVER'S CENTER. NO OTHER NAMES OR MARKS SEEN ON WHITE PAGES. A SOLID BINDING AND CLEAN BOOK EDGES. NOT AN EX-LIBRARY DISCARD. NOT REMAINDER MARKED. MAY BE UNREAD; AND SUITABLE FOR GIFTING. SEE PHOTOS IF AVAILABLE. 7360 NP 01.
Edition:
First Warner Books Hardcover Printing [Stated]
Publisher:
Ingram
Published:
1991
Language:
English
Alibris ID:
15013767132
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Seller's Description:
Very good in Very good jacket. [8], 472 pages. Illustrations (color). DJ has slight wear and soiling and is price clipped. Dominique Lapierre (born 30 July 1931 in Châtelaillon, Charente-Maritime, France) is a French author. The City of Joy is about the unsung heroes of the Pilkhana slum in Kolkata. Lapierre donated half the royalties he earned from this book to support several humanitarian projects in Kolkata, including refuge centres for leper and polio children, dispensaries, schools, rehabilitation workshops, education programs, sanitary actions, and hospital boats. To process and channel the charitable funds he founded an association called Action aid for Calcutta lepers' children. Aware of the corruption in India, he organizes all his fund transfers to India in such a way as to ensure that the money reaches the right person for the right purpose. His wife since 1980, Dominique Conchon-Lapierre is his partner in the City of Joy Foundation. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award in the 2008 Republic Day honours list. Derived from a review posted on-line: Dominique Lapierre has now moved his gaze towards Calcutta, The City of Joy. What Lapierre has presented is not a collage from the scrap-books of history but a subtle ground-level view of the human situation, done with great compassion. It is at this asphyxiating inferno that Lapierre unfolds his epic on the life and times of the Bengali peasant, Hasari Pal, who is uprooted from his village and its primitive agriculture and takes his residence in the urban slum to join the army of men who slide under the shaft of the hand-drawn rickshaw and pull for a pittance the passengers in what may be one of the most degrading rides in the world. The City of Joy is seen through the eyes of Stephan Kovalski. the Polish missionary who settles down in the slum one day in a pair of jeans and a kurta, without the obligatory cassock of the priest. To join him later in the strange crusade is the American doctor, Max Loeb, who is struggling against public apathy to set up a leprosy hospital in the slum.
A fascinating read if a little too religious in parts for my taste.
Helps you to understand the mix of cultures, religions and incomes in India
alwynlau
Oct 17, 2007
True Life and Love in the City of Joy
This is a story of hearts in Calcutta. Dominique Lapierre, world-renowned journalist and author, narrates and interviews the lives and struggles - eventually intertwined - of Hasari Pal (a peasant driven to the city by a drought which devastates his village), Stephan Kovalski (a Polish priest seeking to identify with the poorest of the poor, and getting more than he bargained for in the slums of Anand Nagar) and Max Loeb (a Jewish-American medical grad responding to Kovalski's invitation to help out for a year).
Everything revolves around the 'City of Joy', the name given to the slum of Anand Nagar in the heart of Calcutta. Lapierre's descriptions are fascinating and insightful in their detail and colour as they are horrifying and unbelievably stark in their vividness and actuality. He opens us up to the afflictions, hardships, rituals and occasionally care-free living of lepers, rickshaw pullers, eunuchs, peasants, scrap yard rag-pickers and hovel life in the slum. He explains the intricate and wondrous minutiae of Indian wedding negotiations, festivals, funerals, even toilet rituals; the scheming and inhumanity behind the blood (and skeleton!) donation business, the foetus trade business, the rickshaw business, mafia operations; the sad and almost comical inefficiencies of a Calcutta post-office, hospitals, traffic control; the horrendous adversities brought by floods, droughts, scorching summers, even a cyclone.
Along the way we're also treated to an exciting kite-war, fought between child and adult alike along the slum's rooftops, plus a glimpse of Mother Teresa's ministry in the Home for Dying Destitutes beside the Temple of Kali.For the poor, even their only source of joy - their families and dreams - are vulnerable to separation and shatter.
A family living on a pavement reluctantly and sorrowfully agrees to let their children beg for food when their father can no longer give them food, even after donating blood from his severely under-nourished body (the donation centre extracts surplus blood from him, causing him to faint). The father eventually becomes a rickshaw puller - after his predecessor loses a leg and dies a few days later in hospital - and is overjoyed despite having to run hundreds of miles in the heat and rain, suffer the humiliating treatment meted out by his passengers and people on the street, and risk the loss of his rickshaw from corrupt authorities.
A mother seeks to alleviate her family's food problems (she and her husband has to feed four kids - not to mention themselves - with only a handful of rupees a month) by selling her then-unborn baby for experiment purposes. But the operation, performed in a sleazy 'operating room' by even sleazier characters, goes awry. She bleeds helplessly, and the traders take her foetus and relief her of the upfront money she received. Worst of all, she's left for dead, becoming a target for the corpse business. And her family doesn't know and never sees her again.
A cyclone destroys an entire area of hovels and fills the streets with excrement, filth and carcasses. A defender of the rights of rickshaw pullers (who live hand to mouth and cannot afford a rise in 'taxes', as opposed to rickshaw owners who live fat, comfortable lives) is shot in the head after a successful campaign; a clinic for lepers is destroyed by thugs with zero-toleration for the non-payment of 'protection money', ridiculously high especially given the extant poverty; a rickshaw puller dives into a row of burning rickshaws to save his 'bread and butter' (confiscated and condemned for profit motives); a father breaks his back to produce a dowry and make wedding arrangements for his daughter and dies of sheer exhaustion in the middle of the ceremony, his body instantly collected by human bone traders.
The list goes on. Yet the book is filled with expressions of awe and sheer emotion by the main characters, through whose eyes we see the acts of selflessness, giving and caring which permeates slum-life, in spite of the numerous tragedies and heartaches experienced. There is just so much sharing going on in the book, even by those who have almost nothing for themselves, you'd suspect that giving is an occasion independent of circumstances and resources.
This speaks powerfully to our modern calloused hearts, often desensitized to the poverty and pain of the world (yet strangely overwhelmed by the self-inflicted stress of greed, ambition of urban society). The City of Joy shows us the joy and celebration in the midst of utter destitution, in a world where starvation, sickness and filth (the word-count for 'excrement' is in the dozens) are integral to life. It reveals hope and delight from the simples of things, the barest of providence. And it teaches that in the thick of demonic conditions, hopelessness and tragedy, the greatness and beauty of love shines through.
This book should also be a wake-up call for Christians to be more faithful 'lights' to the world, a reminder that love and self-giving is how we must touch the world. Christ's love, expressed in our compassion, is probably the only form of Gospel having any currency in the slums of the world. Yet how we fall short of Mother Teresa's - and God's - timeless instruction, given to a volunteer regarding a dying man (told midway through the book), "Love him...love him with all your might."
Some of the inhabitants of the City of Joy are role models of devotion and loyalty to what one believes. The numerous prayers and quite thanksgivings of the slum- (and pavement) dwellers reveal a continuous integration of 'religion' and 'daily life' sadly missing in many a Christian. Lapierre narrates, maybe without knowing it, 'true religion' in the story of Hasari Pal and many other Hindus and Muslims in the slums. The reality of the lives in the City of Joy will be an everlasting reminder of how far and deep the love of God can reach.
The City of Joy can show me, if I pay attention, how lovely will be the City of God.