Shame Travels, by Jasvinder Sanghera, was published on 2nd February 2012.
In this follow-up to her bestselling memoirs Shame and Daughters of Shame, Jasvinder tells the riveting story of her journey to find the one member of her family not to have disowned her, her half-sister Bachanu, who lives in rural Punjab, in the village her father left in the late 1950s in order to settle in the UK.
She sets out on this quest not knowing whether the 'shame' that settled on her when she ran away from home to avoid an arranged marriage in the 1970s will follow her to India. Perhaps she will get to the village only to find that her sister turns her away - or worse. For this is a part of the world where women are still murdered in the name of 'honour'.
En route to her ancestral village, Jasvinder stops in Delhi to learn about the reality of forced marriage today. She meets members of the British Embassy team responsible for rescuing young women brought out from the UK to be married off to men they have never met; she visits refuges where the runaways hide; and meets members of the Love Commandos, who help couples who seek 'love marriages' against their families' wishes.
What she learns on the way to her village is constantly surprising, and has much to say to all in the UK who are horrified by the regular stories of abuse and murder in the name of 'honour'; what she finds when she gets there is nothing short of extraordinary.
Jasvinder ends her journey at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holy of holies of the Sikh religion, where she seeks the help of a religious elder in coming to terms with her discoveries.
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Under my own name, I've been writing about the four wounded soldiers who walked to the North Pole last April - accompanied for a while by Prince Harry. Just as interesting as their descriptions of attempting to cross daunting pressure ridges and open water leads with one functioning arm or leg are the stories of how they came to be wounded in Afghanistan. One of them - Steve - describes what it's like to drown in an overturned armoured vehicle. Fortunately for him - and us - he was resuscitated and lived to tell the tale, as well as be part of this record-setting expedition. Walking With The Wounded was published by Little Brown on 1st September 2011 and reached the Sunday Times top ten the following week. Paperback is out in May.
See http://walkingwiththewounded.org.uk/
Otherwise, GOING DUTCH IN BEIJING, my book about global manners, customs and traditions, is still available in good bookshops in paperback, priced £7.99. Profile Books have produced a fine updated edition, which includes extra material on time zones, currencies, international conversions and even the weather you're likely to run into, making it an indispensable part of any traveller's baggage. Please click here to see reviews. The book was also published recently in the US, and in France, where a very chic-looking pink edition is titled ON SE FAIT LA BISE? The Spanish edition has a wonderfully surreal cover, along with the title HACERSE EL SUECO EN LAS ANTIPODAS (which I obviously don't have to translate for you). Editions are also appearing in Poland, Israel, Brazil and Italy.
Most of my other titles (see Books section for extracts) are available on Amazon, for as little as 0.01p in some cases...
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