{"title":"Books by David Shulman","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780674059924","title":"Tamil – A Biography","description":"Spoken by eighty million people in South Asia and a diaspora that stretches across the globe, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother tongue for so many speakers. David Shulman presents a comprehensive cultural history of Tamil—language, literature, and civilization—emphasizing how Tamil speakers and poets have understood the unique features of their language over its long history. Impetuous, musical, whimsical, in constant flux, Tamil is a living entity, and this is its biography.   Two stories animate Shulman’s narrative. The first concerns the evolution of Tamil’s distinctive modes of speaking, thinking, and singing. The second describes Tamil’s major expressive themes, the stunning poems of love and war known as Sangam poetry, and Tamil’s influence as a shaping force within Hinduism. Shulman tracks Tamil from its earliest traces at the end of the first millennium BCE through the classical period, 850 to 1200 CE, when Tamil-speaking rulers held sway over southern India, and into late-medieval and modern times, including the deeply contentious politics that overshadow Tamil today.   Tamil is more than a language, Shulman says. It is a body of knowledge, much of it intrinsic to an ancient culture and sensibility. “Tamil” can mean both “knowing how to love”—in the manner of classical love poetry—and “being a civilized person.” It is thus a kind of grammar, not merely of the language in its spoken and written forms but of the creative potential of its speakers.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56294091817333,"sku":"9780674059924","price":30.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780674059924_9fcff3d0-65b3-45c0-8588-b7b797653c4e.jpg?v=1786015062"},{"product_id":"9781789389098","title":"The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine","description":"\u003cb\u003eA photographic and verbal account of the landscapes of Palestine.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This book offers a portrait of the lives and struggles of Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories on the West Bank, in particular the South Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley. Among the topics highlighted are house demolitions; confrontations between Palestinian shepherds or farmers and Israeli settlers, soldiers, and police; the daily challenges of sheer existence posed by the occupation system, intent on pushing Palestinians off their land; and the tenacity and courage that these conditions require. The book endeavors to impart to the reader a sense of the beauty of the landscape, the sound of the language, the taste of friendships, and the richness of a way of life that is threatened with extinction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Voices of activists, both Palestinian and Jewish, are also present. The introduction sets forth, in brief, the historical context that generated present realities in Palestine as well as the history of the authors’ partnership. The book’s viewpoint reflects many years of activism on the peace and human rights front in Palestine as well as an ongoing conversation between two authors who have experienced together the continually renewed astonishment that comes with such encounters.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56306935857525,"sku":"9781789389098","price":39.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781789389098_339592c4-a8ff-40c1-8a40-75176af6d230.jpg?v=1786026588"},{"product_id":"symbols-of-substance","title":"Symbols of Substance","description":"Symbols of Substance is a groundbreaking analysis of the political culture and political economy of the small Nayaka states that emerged and flourished in the Tamil country in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An unusual product of triple authorship, the book examines how such states emerged, what their ideological moorings were, and what they have left us in terms of a cultural heritage. In so doing, it overturns the cliché of a South India in terminal decline after 1565, which had long dominated the narratives of both historians and popular writers.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57492426916213,"sku":"9788178246802","price":31.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9788178246802.jpg?v=1791212937"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-david-shulman.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}