Amazing grace

Peculiar People, Amazing Lives: Leprosy, Social Exclusion and Community Making in South India
James Staples
Published by Orient Longman

Peculiar People, Amazing Lives is a study of a community of leprosy sufferers in ‘colony’ in Andhra Pradesh. What unites them into a community is not just their disease, but also their social exclusion, they are outcastes from even the outcastes. But ironically as a Christian community, they exclude others too, non-Christian. The author carried out intensive field work not only in the ‘colony’ but also in Mumbai, where many of them earn their livelihood as beggars.

The book is rich in texture, a pleasure to read, with an impressive reading of the literature. It would be useful for students of anthropology in general and medical anthropology in particular.

Mohan Rao
THE BOOK REVIEW, January 2008