A loving tribute to a unique upbringing When Stephen Alter is asked the simple question Where are you from, originally? he hesitates. Although he is in almost every way an American"granted with a trace of British accent"he has an unexpected reply: My real home was in India, a hill station called Mussoorie, seven and a half thousand feet up the Himalayas. That was where I was born and raised, in a section known as Landour... It is a landscape, and a time, that haunts him still: I miss the place itself; the mountains, the view of the high Himalayas beyond Mussoorie, stretching all the way to heaven. The son and grandson of Presbytarian missionaries living in India for more than half a century, every day Alter straddled the profound boundary between utterly different peoples, cultures, languages and religions. He and his brothers spoke a pidgin dialect of Hindustani and English as young boys, fished in the rivers Song, Ganga and the Jumna, and later hunted for barking deer and ghoral in the steep foothills of the mountains always looming behind them. They studied American history but knew more about India's recent independence from England. In All the Way to Heaven, Alter writes affectionately of his family, his Indian friends and his memories exotic and mundane.

All the Way to Heaven: An American Boyhood in the Himalayas

Biographies & Memoirs

Alter, Stephen

STEPHEN ALTER

Travelers & Explorers

Penguin

Twenty class short stories, revised edition that includes new stories by RK Narayana, Avinash Dola and Ismat Chughtai. Other stories include those by Bhisham Sahni, Raja Rao, Anantha Murthy, Anita Desai, Premendra Mitra, Gangadhar Gadgil, Mowni, OV Vijayan and Devanuru Mahadevas. English stories as well as several translated from Indian reigonal languages. A substantial introduction to Modern India.

The Penguin book of modern Indian short stories

Penguin India

A spiritual journey up India s most sacred river  This is an account of a journey taken in India. The destination is the origin of the Ganga, the holiest and most famous of Indian rivers. It is a physical journey, involving months of trekking through forested valleys and snow-covered mountains. It is also a journey of the spirit, taking a man deep into the heart and soul of India s ancient religion.  Stephen Alter, who was born in the Himalayan foothills, crosses many miles and several millennia, to search for the source of Hindu religion. Along the way, as he reaches one holy spot after another, meeting grounds for pilgrims, remote towns and forgotten temples he delves into the myths and traditions of ancient temples. He explores tales from the epics, the intimate connection between natural history and mystical experience, and the sacred wisdom that animates the religious legacy of India.  As every pilgrim learns, a spiritual search involves travel, but ultimately returns to the inner self. Sacred Waters is a richly told, compelling narrative of a whole civilization and of a man s interior journey.

Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimage to the Many Sources of the Ganga

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Elephas Maximumus: A Portrait of the Indian Elephant

History

Asia

Neglected Lives [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2008] Stephen Alter

BRAND NEW, Exactly same ISBN as listed, Please double check ISBN carefully before ordering.

Renuka [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2008] Stephen Alter

The Cloudfarers [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2017] Random House

Puffin

The Godchild

Pipra is not on maps, or even on signposts until you are within six miles of it. It is distinguished from other dusty little roadside towns in India only by its mission hospital with its attendant Christian compound, lb this hospital comes a 'tribal' girl from the hill forests, carrying a sick baby. The baby is cured, her mother is made welcome and seems glad to find shelter among the Christians... so why does she suddenly disappear, leaving the child? Dr Fry wants to keep the baby, whom he has named Patricia. He is, however, persuaded that it would be better for her if she were taken to the USA where a suitable couple is eager to adopt her; so Tricia grows up, not unhappily but never quite comfortably, as an American. Not until she is nearly twenty does she get the chance to return to Pipra in order to search for her origins. India is not in the least like her picture of it. In some ways it is much more commonplace (the embarrassing pettiness of life in the compound!); in some ways frightening and shocking; in some ways reassuring (no one could be easier to love and respect than Dr Fry); and in some ways so completely strange that the only possible response to it is to break out of the shell of her old self. Towards this end she is helped by Gautam, a young man as anxious to escape from Pipra as Tricia is to discover it, and by the totally unexpected conclusion of her quest for her mother. Stephen Alter unfolds this story through subtle shifts of perspective which reveal unsuspected events and hidden meanings, or call up echoes of ancient truths and mysteries. This novel is both more beautiful and more disturbing than its unpretentious front suggests.

HarperCollins Distribution Services

When two modern-day kids discover a grotesque secret in an abandoned mailbox, they have no idea they are about to be drawn into a mystery that began on the other side of the world. Through the help of an English genie and a phantom postman, the two children begin to communicate with a young calligrapher's apprentice who lived 125 years ago in a small, Himalayan village. Writing back and forth, across continents and centuries, the three children eventually realize the possibility of changing history by delivering three letters that were never received. The first is a love letter that could have drawn a broken-hearted Yankee trader back from his lonely exile in the east. The second is a ransom note, and the third, a cryptic missive in a bottle. If the three can make sure these lost letters reach those for whom they were intended, love may be restored, the life of a kidnapped child could be saved, and a secret agent might be able to prevent a pointless war.

Ghost Letters

Scholastic Book Clubs

On India's frontier with Tibet, peace is just a façade and security a myth. The sleepy Himalayan hill station of Mussoorie, near India's border with Tibet, is home to an eclectic mix of residents including Tibetan refugees and former guerrilla fighters, foreign missionaries, Indian military, tourists, and spies. Here, in a top-secret facility facing the snow-clad Himalayas, India's legendary spymaster, Colonel Imtiaz Afridi, keeps a watchful eye on sensitive high-altitude borders. Having been a mountaineer in his youth, Afridi once climbed many of these peaks, including Rataban, a mountain with a treacherous history. When an American agent is shot dead in Mussoorie, both the CIA and India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), dispatch undercover agents to investigate. The American's death is quickly linked to the slayings of two Indo-Tibetan Border Police guards, suggesting possible Chinese infiltration. Working with Afridi is the brilliant junior analyst, Annapurna "Anna" Tagore, who helps him unravel these clues and other disturbing signs that something dangerous is brewing. When more violent acts shatter Mussoorie's calm, the CIA and RAW have no choice but to team up. Soon Afridi and the young Indian and American agents are piecing together a bloody conspiracy of revenge and murder that could shake the very foundations of world peace.

Rataban Betrayal, The

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio

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