East of Home

In 1947, Santha Rama Rau went to Japan with her father, India’s ambassador to Tokyo. A year later, she went to China with friends, hitchhiked to remote provinces of the northwest, and traveled through Indo-China and Siam to Indonesia to live for several months in a Balinese village. East of Home is the report of a fascinating trip, full of information about the people of Asia, their customs, theater and dance. It also shows how a young Indian woman, educated in the West, encounters Asia for the first time and discovers herself as an Asian.


“An informal and pleasantly engaging book about [Santha Rama Rau’s] travels in the Far East... personal, colored by her acute consciousness of being an Asian among Asians.” — The New York Times