Nine Lives: in Search of the Sacred in Modern India is a 2009 travel book by William Dalrymple. …

…  the lives of nine Indians, a Buddhist monk, a Jain nun, a lady from a middle-class family in Calcutta, a prison warden from Kerala, an illiterate goat herd fromRajasthan, and a devadasi among others, as seen during his Indian travels. The book explores the lives of nine such people, each of whom represent a different religious path in nine chapters. …

The book was published by Bloomsbury to great acclaim, The Observer remarking that it “ranks with the very finest travel writing”. …

Pico Iyer, in TIME Magazine, praises the “powerful restraint and clarity” the book brings to “precisely the two subjects — India and faith — that cause most observers to fly off into cosmic vagueness or spleen. The result is a deeply respectful and sympathetic portrait.” …

It is extremely well written. An astonishing look at how normal people go to extremes of religious practice. The first story is of nuns who starve themselves to death as ritual.