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Saama: Innocents in Asia
"This is an account of a journey to India in 1974, an autobiography, and an historical document of the old hippy trail to the east. And it is a love story, and it makes me melancholy to see that the relationship could not have endured common life."
With more than eighty drawings and photographs.
"A writer who has a natural ability to capture the essence of a character in a few lines." (New Statesman)
With more than eighty drawings and photographs.
"A writer who has a natural ability to capture the essence of a character in a few lines." (New Statesman)
237 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2018
2 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Falla
24 books8 followersJonathan Falla was born in 1954 in Jamaica, where his father lectured in English Literature at the University of the West Indies. The family returned to England a year later on a boat laden with bananas.
During the 1990s Jonathan was writing drama. A BBC feature film, The Hummingbird Tree, was shot in Trinidad with a local crew, and went on to win several awards. This helped Jonathan to gain the first Fulbright/T.E.B.Clarke Fellowship to study at the film school of the University of Southern California. The script that he wrote there concerned the Chinese occupation of Tibet. It was never filmed, but became his first published novel, Blue Poppies. Other drama productions included Down the Tubes, a play for community theatre in Edinburgh, and River of Dreams, a musical for children with composer Gordon Murch. He was also translator and scriptwriter for Diriamba!, a co-production between the Edinburgh Theatre Workshop and Teatro Nixtayolero of Nicaragua which won a ‘Fringe First’ on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Five other novels followed: Poor Mercy, Glenfarron, and The Physician of Sanlucar, The White Porcupine, and Good News from Riga.
Jonathan has also written wide-ranging non-fiction, including an edited war memoir of his father, The Luck of the Devil, a collection of essays and travel writing, Beyond the Roadblocks, and an illustrated memoir of the 'hippy trail' to India in 1974, Saama: Innocents in Asia. His account of a year spent with the Karen rebels in Burma, True Love & Bartholomew, is part ethnography, part autobiography, and part historical study, and is widely recognised as a major contribution to the understanding of ethnic conflicts in Asia.
Jonathan is currently an arts lecturer for the UK's Open University, and for ten years has been director of the St Andrews University summer school in creative writing.
During the 1990s Jonathan was writing drama. A BBC feature film, The Hummingbird Tree, was shot in Trinidad with a local crew, and went on to win several awards. This helped Jonathan to gain the first Fulbright/T.E.B.Clarke Fellowship to study at the film school of the University of Southern California. The script that he wrote there concerned the Chinese occupation of Tibet. It was never filmed, but became his first published novel, Blue Poppies. Other drama productions included Down the Tubes, a play for community theatre in Edinburgh, and River of Dreams, a musical for children with composer Gordon Murch. He was also translator and scriptwriter for Diriamba!, a co-production between the Edinburgh Theatre Workshop and Teatro Nixtayolero of Nicaragua which won a ‘Fringe First’ on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Five other novels followed: Poor Mercy, Glenfarron, and The Physician of Sanlucar, The White Porcupine, and Good News from Riga.
Jonathan has also written wide-ranging non-fiction, including an edited war memoir of his father, The Luck of the Devil, a collection of essays and travel writing, Beyond the Roadblocks, and an illustrated memoir of the 'hippy trail' to India in 1974, Saama: Innocents in Asia. His account of a year spent with the Karen rebels in Burma, True Love & Bartholomew, is part ethnography, part autobiography, and part historical study, and is widely recognised as a major contribution to the understanding of ethnic conflicts in Asia.
Jonathan is currently an arts lecturer for the UK's Open University, and for ten years has been director of the St Andrews University summer school in creative writing.
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January 15, 2019
A coming of age tale set in a fascinating and colourful landscape, with interesting anecdotes and quirky characters.
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