Beth's review
Buddha by Karen Armstrong
Reading this alongside The Buddha of Suburbia which provides a nice counterpoint to Kureishi's semi-autobiographical story of a young part-Indian, part-Brit kid growing up in London. Armstrong's dessicated but thorough prose does a nice job synthesizing the multitude of accounts of the Buddha's life. She writes that she draws on a wide variety of sources and, while her prose isn't as juicy as, say, Kureishi's (or even Hermann Hesse's for that matter), it's still a far cry from the bookshelves of academic writing that most readers would be forced to turn to if they wanted to gather up as balanced an overview of this quasi-historical figure.
Curious if the cover image of Buddha for this particular edition is Indian (or Thai...or Cambodian...or...).
Curious if the cover image of Buddha for this particular edition is Indian (or Thai...or Cambodian...or...).
