We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,750,521.09 | Books Available: 730,971 | Members Online: 103

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Silver Castle

Silver Castle
Author: Clive James

Sanjay is a Bombay street child who scales the dizzying heights of the "Silver Castle," the Indian film world, to stand at the parapet of success.                          Unfortunately for Sanjay, he is required to j...  more »ump.

           Told with Clive James's trademark dry wit, The      Silver Castle is a tragicomic morality tale for our time. Part Candide, part Oliver Twist, part Huckleberry Finn, The Silver Castle defies its reader to remain aloof from the suffering of the world's swarming poor while it inspires laughter over the human condition generally. It is a novel of wonder despite its unrelenting realism--      indeed, only wonderment is possible in the face of Sanjay's knack for survival and more than occasional good fortune.

           In his astonishing odyssey from the gutter to the soundstages and salons of Bollywood, Sanjay meets up with every variant of sinner and would-be savior, and along the way he trades on his "heart-breaking" physical beauty and canny lingual facility to grab at luck wherever it may be had--in the pocket of a tourist, as a guide for the Western news crews who regularly descend on Bombay to update their stock footage of grinding poverty, or in the bed of an older male protector or a past-her-prime cinema princess.

           Throughout, Sanjay's spirit is sustained by the movies, and by his first behind-the-scenes glimpse,

as a young trespasser on the set of the Silver Castle, of the magical artifice of filmmaking.

It is a true vision of an utterly false reality, the source of Sanjay's subsequent triumphs and of his ultimate

misfortune. But what happens to Sanjay in the end is not a singular event. As this deeply humane novel

convincingly argues, Sanjay's fate is the world's.

Back Ad:

Perhaps it would have been better for [Sanjay] if he had never seen the Silver Castle, never felt a guiding hand, never blinked at an unstained smile. Then he would not have missed these things. It is just possible, however, that the memory of his first visit to Long Ago sustained him. Imagination and energy are part of each other, and few of us, even though we live in circumstances far more favourable, would ever get to where we are going unless a picture of it, however inaccurate, was already in our minds. If we had to, we too would have to dodge the rain between rubbish dumps, on the long journey back to the taste of a cheese roll, the tang of sparkling water, trumpets that crackle and toe-nails stained with plums. We don't have to, but Sanjay did.

ISBN-13: 9781858496924
ISBN-10: 1858496926
Publication Date: 7/1997
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Polygram Spoken Word
Book Type: Audio Cassette
Other Versions: Paperback, Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Literature & Fiction >> General >> Contemporary
Literature & Fiction >> Authors, A-Z >> ( J ) >> James, Clive

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Silver Castle

Loading...