THE CONCH BEARER

When we first meet 12-year-old Anand, he is carrying an armload of dishes through a crowded tea stall of Kolkata, India. His sister is sick, and his mother depends on the little he brings home. But he's a gentle boy, not hardened by this environment, kind to others, and, most of all, he believes in the magic of dreams. That is why those who keep the conch come to him for help. Somehow whorled into this conch are great powers, and it must be returned. Reader Alan Cumming's voice echoes with this mysterious energy and the noisy streets of India. It has that delicate hint of the Indian English dialect that is at once so precise and so distant, in a story that suggests both the magic of Harry Potter and the grit of Dickens's OLIVER TWIST. Both story and reader are pungent with the spiced tea and the spiked lightning of Anand's fantasy, if it is fantasy. P.E.F.
(c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 04]