The Small Wild Goose Pagoda

Irwin Allan Sealy

Aleph, 290 pages, RS 395

The Small Wild Goose Pagoda is a natural and social history of 433 square yards of India. On this piece of land in the foothills of the Himalayas, the Sealy family have a small brick house with one-and-a-half bedrooms, two-and-a-half gardens, an old Fiat, an internet link to the world and a terrace roof to walk on under the sky. Sealy’s first book in a decade is a meditation on work, family history, nature, Indian society, and the passage of time.