The City of Joy [Mass Market Paperback]

Dominique Lapierre (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 1990

Made into a movie starring Patrick Swayze, this is the inspiring story of an American doctor who experienced a spiritual rebirth in an impoverished section of Calcutta.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

What irony that one of Calcutta's most devastating slums should be known as Anand Nagar, ``the City of Joy.'' By interweaving impressionistic glimpses from the lives of a French priest, a rickshaw driver, and an American doctor, Lapierre creates a searing vision of the struggle for survival, the flashing violence, and the social and cultural practices of the slum. His theme that from human misery can emerge joy might seem to some readers as a bogus acceptance of a terrible evil. Yet Lapierre's narrative slides skillfully in and out of both history and fiction to create an effective but horrible montage of disease, death, and destruction amid elements of charity, hope, and love. The City of Joy should elicit strong reactions from readers. BOMC and Quality Paperback Book Club alternates. John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ. Lib., Mt. Pleasant
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 552 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; later printing edition (May 7, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446355569
• ISBN-13: 978-0446355568
• Product Dimensions: 4.1 x 1.3 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #374,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #59 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Evangelism > Missions & Missionary Work
  • #81 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Church History > General
  • #86 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Leaders & Notable People > Religious

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars True Life and Love in the City of Joy, April 8, 2002

By 

Alwyn Lau (Petaling Jaya, Selangor Malaysia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The City of Joy (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a story of hearts in Calcutta. Dominique Lapierre, world-renowned journalist and author, narrates and interviews the lives and struggles - eventually intertwined - of Hasari Pal (a peasant driven to the city by a drought which devastates his village), Stephan Kovalski (a Polish priest seeking to identify with the poorest of the poor, and getting more than he bargained for in the slums of Anand Nagar) and Max Loeb (a Jewish-American medical grad responding to Kovalski's invitation to help out for a year).

Everything revolves around the 'City of Joy', the name given to the slum of Anand Nagar in the heart of Calcutta. Lapierre's descriptions are fascinating and insightful in their detail and colour as they are horrifying and unbelievably stark in their vividness and actuality. He opens us up to the afflictions, hardships, rituals and occasionally care-free living of lepers, rickshaw pullers, eunuchs, peasants, scrap yard rag-pickers and hovel life in the slum. He explains the intricate and wondrous minutiae of Indian wedding negotiations, festivals, funerals, even toilet rituals; the scheming and inhumanity behind the blood (and skeleton!) donation business, the foetus trade business, the rickshaw business, mafia operations; the sad and almost comical inefficiencies of a Calcutta post-office, hospitals, traffic control; the horrendous adversities brought by floods, droughts, scorching summers, even a cyclone. Along the way we're also treated to an exciting kite-war, fought between child and adult alike along the slum's rooftops, plus a glimpse of Mother Teresa's ministry in the Home for Dying Destitutes beside the Temple of Kali.

For the poor, even their only source of joy - their families and dreams - are vulnerable to separation and shatter.

A family living on a pavement reluctantly and sorrowfully agrees to let their children beg for food when their father can no longer give them food, even after donating blood from his severely under-nourished body (the donation centre extracts surplus blood from him, causing him to faint). The father eventually becomes a rickshaw puller - after his predecessor loses a leg and dies a few days later in hospital - and is overjoyed despite having to run hundreds of miles in the heat and rain, suffer the humiliating treatment meted out by his passengers and people on the street, and risk the loss of his rickshaw from corrupt authorities. A mother seeks to alleviate her family's food problems (she and her husband has to feed four kids - not to mention themselves - with only a handful of rupees a month) by selling her then-unborn baby for experiment purposes. But the operation, performed in a sleazy 'operating room' by even sleazier characters, goes awry. She bleeds helplessly, and the traders take her foetus and relief her of the upfront money she received. Worst of all, she's left for dead, becoming a target for the corpse business. And her family doesn't know and never sees her again. A cyclone destroys an entire area of hovels and fills the streets with excrement, filth and carcasses. A defender of the rights of rickshaw pullers (who live hand to mouth and cannot afford a rise in 'taxes', as opposed to rickshaw owners who live fat, comfortable lives) is shot in the head after a successful campaign; a clinic for lepers is destroyed by thugs with zero-toleration for the non-payment of 'protection money', ridiculously high especially given the extant poverty; a rickshaw puller dives into a row of burning rickshaws to save his 'bread and butter' (confiscated and condemned for profit motives); a father breaks his back to produce a dowry and make wedding arrangements for his daughter and dies of sheer exhaustion in the middle of the ceremony, his body instantly collected by human bone traders.

The list goes on. Yet the book is filled with expressions of awe and sheer emotion by the main characters, through whose eyes we see the acts of selflessness, giving and caring which permeates slum-life, in spite of the numerous tragedies and heartaches experienced. There is just so much sharing going on in the book, even by those who have almost nothing for themselves, you'd suspect that giving is an occasion independent of circumstances and resources. This speaks powerfully to our modern calloused hearts, often desensitized to the poverty and pain of the world (yet strangely overwhelmed by the self-inflicted stress of greed, ambition of urban society). The City of Joy shows us the joy and celebration in the midst of utter destitution, in a world where starvation, sickness and filth (the word-count for 'excrement' is in the dozens) are integral to life. It reveals hope and delight from the simples of things, the barest of providence. And it teaches that in the thick of demonic conditions, hopelessness and tragedy, the greatness and beauty of love shines through.

This book should also be a wake-up call for Christians to be more faithful 'lights' to the world, a reminder that love and self-giving is how we must touch the world. Christ's love, expressed in our compassion, is probably the only form of Gospel having any currency in the slums of the world. Yet how we fall short of Mother Teresa's - and God's - timeless instruction, given to a volunteer regarding a dying man (told midway through the book), "Love him...love him with all your might."

Some of the inhabitants of the City of Joy are role models of devotion and loyalty to what one believes. The numerous prayers and quite thanksgivings of the slum- (and pavement) dwellers reveal a continuous integration of 'religion' and 'daily life' sadly missing in many a Christian. Lapierre narrates, maybe without knowing it, 'true religion' in the story of Hasari Pal and many other Hindus and Muslims in the slums.

The reality of the lives in the City of Joy will be an everlasting reminder of how far and deep the love of God can reach. The City of Joy can show me, if I pay attention, how lovely will be the City of God.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars STORY OF THE UNBREAKABLE HUMAN SPIRIT, January 4, 2006

By 

Abhilash R. Nambiar "Abhilash Nambiar" (Stamford, CT, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The City of Joy (Mass Market Paperback)

No other book I had ever read has ever made me more proud about the fact that I am an Indian or importantly, a human being. The moving story, that the author claims is based on facts is probably based on a true one. What is truly remarkable though, is the fact that this is probably not an unusual story or for that matter even an uncommon one! It happens, more so in India that anywhere else, despite 200 years of British rule the Western had not been able to take from these people what they prize most, their dignity. People trying to live a decent life, who hope to live with at least an ounce of self-respect going to great extremes to attain it.

It doesn't surprise me to know this today, nor does it surprise me to know it took so long for the world to know this. What amazes me is that so many Indians have written such bad reviews about this book. It seems ironic that a book that tells a story about the majority of Indians who are uneducated is not appreciated by the minority that are. It makes sense though. This book doesn't directly attempt to glorify India's culture, its traditions or values. Instead it speaks about the bitter realities of a ghetto that almost all educated Indians with a modern outlook likes to pretend don't exist. These are the people that Westerners mostly interact with, these are the people who want to impress India to the rest of the world, and the truths in this book are not what they would think is impressive. It still impressive none the less. In fact it is more than impressive that even at the lowest of low of economic degradation a man can still try to live a life of dignity - the kind that every human being deserves to live with.

IF AFTER READING THIS BOOK YOU SHED A TEAR, either of joy or sorrow, GO TO THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE MOST AND TELL THEM HOW MUCH YOU LOVE THEM, thank them for who they are and after that thank God for the beauty that is your life and lastly thank yourself because you are a wonderful human-being.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Typical westerner's view of India?, November 18, 2002

By 

Rajesh Chandra - See all my reviews

This review is from: The City of Joy (Mass Market Paperback)

The theme of this book is really worth to read. A missionary comes to India to service poor people and live with them, participate in their joy and sorrow of them really makes you gel with the book. But I don't understand the view of the foreigner's about the sanitation condition of India(from Seinfeld to this authour). They always view that as an adventure(true it is disgusting in some places, including where I lived) and wanted to explain that ad nauseum, but my suggestion would be India is not a land of lacking sanitation and dirt as the media claims in the other side of the world. It has its true colors and history and people who dedicated their life like Mother Teresa. Please write about them. Another thing to mention about is referring Kama Sutra(like mentioning drug cartels in most of the south american books). Please note that in majority of Indian home, Kama Sutra book is viewed as Playboy or PlayGirl in a conservsative american home.

Apart from that, this book never wavered from the reality. About a peasant's life, how his life turns upside down when the city takes him in, how the missionary adapts the life in India and how the rich and poor view their life has been well documented. Definetly worth to read.