Ruth Harris is the author of Lourdes and The Man on Devil’s Island, which won the Wolfson Prize and the National Jewish Book Award. She is Senior Research Fellow at All Soul’s College, University of Oxford, Fellow of the British Academy, and Professor of European History at the University of Oxford.
This is a deeply researched and compellingly argued biography of
Swami Vivekananda, one of the first Indian religious thinkers to
become known in the west, and one of the makers of modern
India.
*BBC History Magazine*
Guru to the World is a triumph of research and ambition, drawing
connections between a dazzling array of philosophies, figures,
languages, geographies and religions.
*Literary Review*
This will be the standard biography of [Vivekananda] for years to
come…Admirable.
*Spirituality & Practice*
Vivekananda’s life was an embarrassment of epiphanies and
contradictions, and Harris exhaustively uncovers all of them.
*History Today*
Vivekananda was many things to many people: the first global
religious celebrity, an apostle of Indian nationalism, a man whose
message was heard, and heard differently, in salons as well as
slums. It’s not just any biographer who can do justice to such a
complex life. He’s fortunate to have found a perfect interpreter in
Ruth Harris.
*Benjamin Moser, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Sontag:
Her Life and Work*
In Ruth Harris’s vivid portrait of India’s Vivekananda, we discover
a compelling story of interconnected lives—the guru, his disciple,
the international followers, his own teacher—that sheds new light
on religion, race, gender, colonialism, and nationalism. This
impressive book introduces us to some important but half-forgotten
cultural currents in the life of India, Europe, and America at the
end of the nineteenth century. To understand contemporary India, we
need to pay more attention to these currents, and Harris is a
sure-footed guide.
*Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury*
In Guru to the World, Ruth Harris gives us riveting accounts of
both the Indian and the international sides of Swami Vivekananda,
one of the most provocative personalities of the nineteenth
century. The connections between tradition and modernity forged by
him over a century ago continue to influence culture, politics, and
religion worldwide. A brilliant read.
*Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, author of An Aesthetic Education in
the Era of Globalization*
An inspired blend of religion, politics, and biography, Guru to the
World takes a novel approach to the history of empire and
cross-cultural encounters that foregrounds the workings of love,
friendship, and faith. In the lives of Vivekananda and his
associates, Ruth Harris delivers insight into topics ranging from
yoga to anticolonial nationalism that should interest any readers
curious to understand the workings of what might be called
globalized culture.
*Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch*
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