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Strangers Drowning - Voyages to the Brink of Moral Extremity (Paperback)
Loot Price: R274
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Strangers Drowning - Voyages to the Brink of Moral Extremity (Paperback)
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List price R336
Loot Price R274
Discovery Miles 2 740
You Save R62 (18%)
Expected to ship within 9 - 15 working days
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SUNDAY TIMES and GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 What does it mean
to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In Strangers Drowning,
Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme
ethical commitment, and tells their intimate stories: their
stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their
recklessness; their wrenching dilemmas. A couple adopts two
children in distress. But then they think: if they can change two
lives, why not four? Or ten? They adopt twenty. But how do they
weigh the needs of unknown children in distress against the needs
of the children they already have? Another couple founds a leprosy
colony in the wilderness in India, living in huts with no walls,
knowing that their two small children may contract leprosy or be
eaten by panthers. The children survive. But what if they hadn't?
How would their parents' risk have been judged? We honour such
generosity and high ideals; but when we call people 'do-gooders'
there is scepticism in it, even hostility. Why do moral people make
us uneasy? Between her stories, MacFarquhar threads a lively
history of the novels, philosophy, social science, and self-help
that have contributed to a deep suspicion of do-gooders in Western
culture. Through its sympathetic and beautifully vivid
storytelling, Strangers Drowning confronts us with fundamental
questions about what it means to be human. In a world of strangers
drowning in need, how much should we help, and how much can we
help? Is it right to care for strangers even at the expense of
those we are closest to? Moving and provocative, Strangers Drowning
challenges us to think about what we value most, and why.
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