Looking for a Kingdom (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781872897134)

CHRISTINE MANGALA was born in Tanjore District, Tamil Nadu, South India into a Brahmin family distinguished for five centuries as devotees of Shiva, and as Sanskrit scholars, writers and composers. Educated in India at the Universities of Delhi and Osmania, she was the first woman to win the Nehru Memorial Trust, which took her to the University of Cambridge for a doctorate on 'The Problem of Evil in Jacobean Drama'. Since 1968, Christine Mangala has lived largely in the west, though maintaining regular contact with her homeland. She married a Cambridge don and raised four children, then spent twenty-two years with her family in Newcastle, New South Wales, before returning to Cambridge, where she has been active in the development of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies. She has taught literature in the Universities of Cambridge and Newcastle, New South Wales, but in more recent years has put her experience of eastern and western religions to promoting a better understanding of both: through lectures, broadcasts and publications, but especially in several works of fiction that 'flesh the bones', exploring what such beliefs mean in human experience. Her first novel, The Firewalkers (1991), was short-listed for the Commonwealth Best First Book Prize and also for the Deo Gloria Award. The Australia Council Literature Board funded her second novel, Transcendental Pastimes (1997), which takes a western film-crew to South India to investigate a guru who claims to remember his past incarnations. Looking for A Kingdom, her third novel, now draws on her unique experience to bring India to Australia in a joyful and entertaining celebration of the meeting of two very different cultures. Shalimar Gardens, to be published in 2014, is a murder mystery involving Hindu and Muslim extremists whose activities disrupt the centuries-old social and religious harmony of a civilised Indian city. Christine Mangala is currently preparing a scholarly study of Orthodox Christianity in relation to Hindu beliefs.