Lissie Pendle - Burns, Ian

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Résumé :
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Biographie:
This story is the final of three set in India and Australia, beginning around 1950 and following through to today. Ranga Plays Australia tells the original story, in the third person. It had its origin in a suggestion by an old friend that I write a book about India, cricket, and Australia - surely an irresistible combination. But I am not Indian, though I did have boyhood Indian playmates and have visited India several times, so my concern resolved around writing authentically, where an Indian reader would not be able to take me to task. Luckily, I was introduced to Bhaktavatsala Moola, an eminent movie producer and widely-read in English literature. He was also a protege of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Bhakta rode shotgun on me, chapter by chapter. Looking back on the story, I found that I was very fond of Ranga's guru and his many wise sayings, such that I put these together in a second book, The Wisdom of Harkishen Singh, which was complemented with photos of an earlier India. Now this book, which shows the context of some of Harkishen's sayings, and spends more time with Ranga's later life, with more attention to his Australian experience. This is told in the first person.

Sommaire:
Lissie Pendle is about trouble. But not trouble with a capital T. It's trouble which just...well, it just happens. Usually with the help of her little brother, or Scratcher and his friends, or just....things. Lissie is busy, pre-occupied, if you like, coping with events and trying to sort out and put in their proper place (ie beside and slightly in awe of her) the various eligible boys of the town. In these endeavours she succeeds quite gloriously, although she's actually the only person who understands this. In the course of telling us about a number of pretty unusual events, such as the case of the killer koala, or what happened in old-fashioned trains' toilets, or when she met a lady who inserted capital letters into her conversation, or when there was blood instead of ink in the inkwell, or....well, a pile of other things, we discover an Australia of another time. When things were clear, including the air, and life was simpler and, yes, funnier....