Solitude of Illusions

Winner, Tilly Aston Award for Best Braille Book, Braille and Talking Book Library Awards 1997 Shortlisted, Christina Stead Prize and Ethnic Affairs Commission Awards, New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards 1997 Shortlisted, Tilly Ashton Award for Best Braille Book, Benella Award for Best Audio Book, Braille & Talking Book Library Awards 1997 She was meant to teach him about manners and behaviour, about love-making and its pleasures beyond the act itself. Instead. he learned about the vulnerability of the human heart and the way it defies reason. Plagued by terminal illness, Khalid Sharif leaves his home in Calcutta to visit his Australian son, Javed. Javed is confounded by the old man's rebellious idiosyncrasies that contradict a life-long impression of a dull, predictable father who had devoted his life to business and family. What Javed does not know is that, as a young man, Khalid Sharif was sent to a sophisticated house of courtesans for a cultural education. Against convention, he fell in love with a young courtesan, Nazli, and asked her to marry him. An outraged family pressured him into breaking his betrothal. It is this broken promise that con


Genre: Literary Fiction