In New York, British director Peter Brook's nine-hour production of an ancient Hindu epic poem, The Mahabharata, has lately been playing to packed houses and considerable critical praise. ... Across the country, strolling visitors marveled a few years ago at all the silken saris and bright turbans of the Festival of India (SMITHSONIAN, June 1985) and, even more, at the exotic world they evoke: the bejeweled splendor of the Mogul courts; dusty, teeming streets; and all the dilemmas confronting the imperial British as they sought to bring Western ideas of order to one of the wildest and mos...

• Word Count: 5127
• Approx Pages: 21
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Introduction Derek Walcott's "A Far Cry from Africa," published in 1962, is a painful and jarring depiction of ethnic conflict and divided loyalties. The opening images of the poem are drawn from accounts of the Mau Mau Uprising, an extended and bloody battle during the 1950s between European settlers and the native Kikuyu tribe in what is now the republic of Kenya. In the early twentieth century, the first white settlers arrived in the region, forcing the Kikuyu people off of their tribal lands. Europeans took control of farmland and the government, relegating the Kikuyu to a ...

• Word Count: 4862
• Approx Pages: 19
• Grade Level: Undergraduate