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Just Arrived

The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Pleasure District

by Louise Brown
RM45.00 MYR
The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Pleasure District
The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Pleasure District

Intimate, haunting portrait of inherited survival

This is the kind of nonfiction that reads with the emotional pull of a novel, drawing you deep into a hidden world most people never truly see. Louise Brown writes with remarkable restraint and compassion, which makes Maha and her daughters feel heartbreakingly real rather than sensationalized. If you’re drawn to stories about women, survival, and the weight of tradition, this one lingers long after the final page.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.
Just Arrived

The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Pleasure District

by Louise Brown
RM45.00 MYR
Condition guide

Book Condition Guide

Books in Like New Condition

This book may contain very minor cosmetic defects, but it is in pristine condition. There should be no yellowing, no foxing, no water damage, and no annotations of any kind on the cover and the pages. For paperbacks, there should not be any crease marks on the spine. This book is good as new — lucky you!

*Books may be missing bundle media (e.g. CD, e-book code), if included.

Books in Very Good Condition

This book has been used, but it is still in a clean condition. There should be no foxing or annotations of any kind on the inner pages, but a sparse amount may be present on the cover, title pages, or outside edges of the book. There should be no water damage of any kind. For paperbacks, there may be light crease marks on the spine.

*Books may be missing bundle media (e.g. CD, e-book code), if included.

Books in Good Condition

We do our best to ensure the quality of our books, but there is no escaping the wear and tear that comes with time. Slight foxing and some annotations may be present on the pages and the cover. There should be no water damage of any kind. For paperbacks, there may be several crease marks on the spine.

*Books may be missing bundle media (e.g. CD, e-book code), if included.

Books in Well Read Condition

This is a well-read book, which means that the previous owner probably really enjoyed it! The cover and pages may include moderate foxing and annotations, but the text is not obscured and still readable. Moderate cosmetic defects and minor water damage may be present on the edges of the book. For paperbacks, there may be multiple crease marks on the spine.

*Books may be missing bundle media (e.g. CD, e-book code), if included.

 

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ISBN: 9780060740436
Authors: Louise Brown
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date of Publication: 2006-07-03
Format: Paperback
Related Collections: History, Sociology, Religion
Related Topics: History, Poverty, Social Issues, Anthropology, Asia, Womens, Gender
Goodreads rating: 3.85
(rated by 1712 readers)

Description

With beautiful understatement, Louise Brown turns a novelist's eye on a true story that beggars the imagination—the lives of the 'dancing girls' of Lahore, Pakistan. The dancing girls of Lahore inhabit the Diamond Market in the shadow of a great mosque. The twenty-first century goes on outside the walls of this ancient quarter but scarcely registers within. Though their trade can be described with accuracy as prostitution, the dancing girls have an illustrious history: beloved by emperors and nawabs, their sophisticated art encompassed the best of Mughal culture. The modern-day Bollywood aesthetic, with its love of gaudy spectacle, music, and dance, is their distant legacy. But the life of the pampered courtesan is not the one now being lived by Maha and her three girls. What they do is forbidden by Islam, though tolerated; but they are gandi, 'unclean,' and Maha's daughters, like her, are born into the business and will not leave it. Sociologist Louise Brown spent four years in the most intimate study of the family life of a Lahori dancing girl. Maha, a classically trained dancer of exquisite grace, had her virginity sold to a powerful Arab sheikh at the age of twelve; when her own daughter Nena comes of age and Maha cannot bring in the money she once did, she faces a terrible decision as the agents of the sheikh come calling once more.
 

Intimate, haunting portrait of inherited survival

This is the kind of nonfiction that reads with the emotional pull of a novel, drawing you deep into a hidden world most people never truly see. Louise Brown writes with remarkable restraint and compassion, which makes Maha and her daughters feel heartbreakingly real rather than sensationalized. If you’re drawn to stories about women, survival, and the weight of tradition, this one lingers long after the final page.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.