Located on the west coast of India along the Arbian Sea, Goa was liberated in 1961, after 450 years of Portuguese rule. The ambivalence created by this transition of culture and political loyalty provides the backdrop for the work of Indian photographer Prabuddha Dasgupta in Edge of Faith. The 79 black-and-white photographs create an intimate and deeply personal portrait of the Catholic Community in Goa rarely seen before–a portrait of a gentle and generous people, torn between their fidelity to a history of Portuguese faith and culture and their post-independence Indian identity.
Acclaimed travel writer William Dalrymple provides an accompanying text that explores both the history of Goa's Catholic past and its struggle to deal with its multicultural, multireligious present.
Edge of Faith captures Catholic Goa in a haunting, but beautiful impasse–caught in a time warp between comforting nostalgia and a doubt-ridden, insecure future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR William Dalrymple
William Dalrymple was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of Firth of Forth. He is the author of five books of history and travel, including the highly acclaimed best-seller City of Djinns , which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. His previous book, White Mughals, garnered a range of prizes, including the prestigious Wolfson Prize for History 2003 and the Scottish Book of the Year Prize. It was also shortlisted for the PEN History Award, the Kiriyama Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. A stage version by Christopher Hampton has been co-commissioned by the National Theatre and the Tamasha Theatre Company. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Asiatic Society, Dalrymple was awarded the 2002 Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his ‘outstanding contribution to travel literature’ and the Sykes Medal of the Royal Society of Asian Affairs in 2005 for his contribution to the understanding of contemporary Islam. He wrote and presented three television series, Stones of the Raj, Sufi Soul and Indian Journeys, the last of which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA in 2002. In December 2005 his article on the madrasas of Pakistan was awarded the prize for Print Article of the Year at the 2005 FPA Media Awards. He is married to the artist Olivia Fraser, and they have three children. They divide their time between London, Scotland and Delhi.
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