A Strange Kind of Paradise: India through Foreign Eyes

A Strange Kind of Paradise is an
exploration of India’s past and present,
from the perspective of a foreigner who
has lived in India for many years. Sam
Miller investigates how the ancient Greeks,
the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, Africans,
Europeans and Americans—everyone really,
except for Indians themselves—came
to imagine India.
His account of the engagement between
foreigners and India spans the centuries
from Alexander the Great to Slumdog
Millionaire. It features, among many others,
Thomas the Apostle, the Chinese monk
Xuanzang, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Vasco
da Gama, Babur, Clive of India, several
Victorian pornographers, Mark Twain,
EM Forster, Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles
and Steve Jobs. Interspersed between
these tales is the story of Sam Miller’s own
twenty-five-year-long love affair with India.
The result is a spellbinding, 2500-year-long
journey through Indian history, culture
and society, in the company of an author
who informs, educates and entertains
in equal measure, as he travels in the
footsteps of foreign chroniclers, exposes
some of their fabulous fantasies and
overturns long-held stereotypes about race,
identity and migration. A tour de force that
is at once scholarly and thought-provoking,
delightfully eccentric and laugh-out-loud
funny, this book is destined to become
a much-loved classic.