Goedhart, Peter: Tulips in India

Goedhart, P.: Tulipánok Indiában

Magyarul

Goedhart, P.: Tulipánok Indiában : 25 rövid történet. Hungarian translation: Orbán Éva, Táborossy Anna. Budapest, Wesley Kiadó, 2022.  112 p. URL: https://mek.oszk.hu/24900/24921/24921.pdf

Peter Goedhart is an agricultural engineer who has visited India, Pakistan and Nepal several times a year since 1985 as an expert for a Dutch interchurch aid organisation. His book offers a glimpse into layers of life there that tourists can only guess at. He holds up a mirror to Europeans living in prosperity. It inspires organisers of aid programmes and funding agencies for introspection. The book directs our attention to depths of poverty we never encounter, while showing us some of the pitfalls of social work. Even though all this is set thousands of kilometres away in an ‘exotic’ country, we are involved in the stories, we feel empathy with the helpers and the people they help, both in desperate situation, and share their small successes.

The book is both profound and entertaining. The stories are spiced with humour and humanity. Criticism, wrapped in a rich self-irony, is easier to accept, and perhaps that is why we feel that, despite the setbacks, we cannot give up the effort to create better conditions for the most disadvantaged and the poorest.

Orbán Éva

Full test of the book in Hungarian is freely available in the Hungarian Electronic Library:
https://mek.oszk.hu/24900/24921/24921.pdf

It can be purchased at www.bukikonyv.hu. Price: 2400 HUF