Kanthapura is the story of how Gandhi's struggle for independence from the British came to a typical village, Kanthapura, in South India. Young Moorthy, back from the city with "new ideas," cuts across the ancient barriers of caste to unite the villagers in non-violent action–which is met with violence by landlords and police. The dramatic tale unfolds in a poetic, almost mythical style which conveys as never before the rich textures of Indian rural life. The narrator is an old woman, imbued with the legendary history of the region, who knows the past of all the characters and comments on their actions with sharp-eyed wisdom. Her narrative, and the way she tells it, evokes the spirit of India's traditional folk-epics.

SUMMARY

The god Hermes (Mercury), having fallen deeply in love with a nymph who has hidden herself from him, hears a voice complaining of being imprisoned in a snake's body. The speaker is a beautiful serpent. She tells Hermes that she knows he seeks a nymph and offers to make the nymph, to whom she has given the power of invisibility, visible to him providing he will restore to her her woman's body. Hermes gladly agrees. The nymph becomes visible to Hermes; the serpent turns into a beautiful woman and disappears.

Lamia, the serpent-turned-woman, while in her serpent state, had the power to send her spirit wherever she wished. On one of her spirit journeys she had seen a Corinthian youth, Lycius. Now, as woman, she reappears and stands at the side of a road along which she knows Lycius will come on his way to Corinth. When he arrives, she addresses him, asking him if he will leave her all alone where she is. Lycius looks at her and at once falls violently in love with her. Together they walk to Corinth and make their abode in a mansion which she leads him to. There they live together as man and wife, avoiding the company of others.

Lycius and Lamia live happily in the blisses of love until Lycius decides they ought to marry and invite all their friends to the marriage festival. Lamia is strongly opposed to this plan, but the persistence of Lycius at last wins her reluctant consent. She agrees on the condition that Lycius will not invite the philosopher Apollonius to the marriage feast.

While Lycius is absent inviting all his kinsfolk to the wedding, Lamia, with her magic powers, summons invisible servants who decorate the banquet room and furnish it with rich foods of every kind. When Lycius' guests arrive — Lamia has no friends or relatives in Corinth, she tells Lycius — they marvel at the splendor of the mansion. None of them had known that there was such a magnificent palace in Corinth. Among the guests is Apollonius, who has come uninvited.

At the height of the wedding feast, Apollonius begins to stare fixedly at Lamia. Lamia grows pale and exhibits extreme discomfort. She makes no answer to Lycius' agonized questions as to what ails her. The feasting and the music come to a stop. Turning to Apollonius, Lycius commands him to cease staring at Lamia. "Fool," answers the philosopher contemptuously, "from every ill / Of life have I preserv'd thee to this day, / And shall I see thee made a serpent's prey?" Looking at Lamia again, he utters two words: "A serpent!" At the words, Lamia vanishes. At the moment of her disappearance, Lycius dies.

Critical Quarterly is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the humanities published by Wiley. The editor-in-chief is Colin MacCabe. The journal notably published the Black Papers on education starting in 1969.

Plot of the novel

The book follows Henry Perowne, a middle-aged, successful surgeon. Five chapters chart his day and thoughts on Saturday the 15 February 2003, the day of the demonstration against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the largest protest in British history. Perowne's day begins in the early morning, when he sees a burning aeroplane streak across the sky. This casts a shadow over the rest of his day as reports on the television change and shift: is it an accident, or terrorism?

En route to his weekly squash game, a traffic diversion reminds Perowne of the anti-war protests occurring that day. After being allowed through the diversion, he collides with another car, damaging its wing mirror. At first the driver, Baxter, tries to extort money from him. When Perowne refuses, Baxter and his two companions become aggressive. Noticing symptoms in Baxter's behaviour, Perowne quickly recognises the onset of Huntington's disease. Though he is punched in the sternum, Perowne manages to escape unharmed by distracting Baxter with discussions of his disease.

Perowne goes on to his squash match, still thinking about the incident. He loses the long and contested game by a technicality in the final set. After lunch he buys some fish from a local fishmonger for dinner. He visits his mother, suffering from vascular dementia, who is cared for in a nursing home.

After a visit to his son's rehearsal, Perowne returns home to cook dinner, and the evening news reminds him of the grander arc of events that surround his life. When Daisy, his daughter, arrives home from Paris, the two passionately debate the coming war in Iraq. His father-in-law arrives next. Daisy reconciles an earlier literary disagreement that led to a froideur with her maternal grandfather; remembering that it was he who had inspired her love of literature. Perowne's son Theo returns next.

Rosalind, Perowne's wife, is the last to arrive home. As she enters, Baxter and an accomplice 'Nige' force their way in armed with knives. Baxter punches the grandfather, intimidates the family and orders Daisy to strip naked. When she does, Perowne notices that she is pregnant. Finding out she is a poet, Baxter asks her to recite a poem. Rather than one of her own, she recites Dover Beach, which affects Baxter emotionally, effectively disarming him. Instead he becomes enthusiastic about Perowne's renewed talk about new treatment for Huntington's disease. After his companion abandons him, Baxter is overpowered by Perowne and Theo, and knocked unconscious after falling down the stairs. That night Perowne is summoned to the hospital for a successful emergency operation on Baxter. Saturday ends at around 5:15 a.m. on Sunday, after he has returned from the hospital and made love to his wife again.

Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech . A regular pattern of sound or rhythm may emerge in free-verse lines, but the poet does not adhere to a metrical plan in their composition.