Title: A Thousand Ways to Love: Update of the Kama Sutra
Author: Dewanand
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
ISBN: 978-1622123544
Pages: 230, Paperback/Kindle
Genre: Self-Improvement/Sexuality
Reviewed by: Robert A. Meyerhauser, Ph.D., Pacific Book Review
Book Review
A Thousand Ways to Love: Update on the Kama Sutra is a book which will simultaneously shock the reader while challenging his or her innermost beliefs on human sexuality. It would be analogous to a discothèque’s mirror ball, with the beam of light being one’s innate human desires. The thousands of reflections from the ball, each smaller beam of light, then becomes another deviation of the physical and mental conditions of love and explained in detail. Each of the thousand kinds of love are categorized, explained, revealed and brought to a clear juxtaposition against each other in a scientific yet poetic writing style, unabashed with such candor that at times seems very raspy with use of language.Dewanand has a unique style of explaining his basis for the very personal beliefs readers have when paging this book. At times a challenging read, where a disagreement in the author’s premise may result in closure of the book. However if the reader maintains an open mind, the higher level of all of the work which has gone into the explanations are revealed and an objective understanding, disassociated with one’s personal opinion, emerges.
The first third of the book lulls the reader into an understanding of basic human sexuality, quite agnostic with respect to condoling any righteousness or social taboos, yet comprehensive in touching each and every aspect of how the mind-body is programmed and love evolves with age. The intellectual reader cannot go without being struck from some insight by Dewanand’s zealous dissection of the subject matter. Even Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the American sex therapist, would seem modest in comparison to the granularity author Dewanand brings to the discussion.
Dewanand, for example, categorized love into Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta. These distinct “loves” are fascinating and frankly quite well articulated. Love of oneself, heterosexual love, homosexual love, love of physical innate objects, even love of animals or one’s relationship with a dog are described. Dewanand moves quickly through each topic because he has so much to cover that the reader is brought to a different subject at a point so swiftly his or her attention is still peaked. This gives the rather text-book style book a bit of a novel paging. I read it in two sittings.
The latter part of the book is a change bringing Hindu and Islam philosophies into the matrix of the human sexuality condition. Having Kama Sutra as a foundation, this section of the book overlays a historical and evolutionary aspect of social and religious trends as related to sex, pleasure, reproduction, status and prostitution. It is a “No holds barred” dissertation; somewhat crude at times with many bazaar concepts. Many people not may – but will — be offended by comments within this book, no doubt. It is not for the tea-sipping church going crowd of Victorian era readers.
While reading A Thousand Ways to Love, I often wondered how Dewanand came up with his verbose and unabashed thoughts. I envisioned him sitting at a café in Holland, sipping caffeinated concoctions and interleaving his own fantasy with experience, explaining to himself why he felt the way he did at times in his life. His writing posture is scientific in style, yet shallow with footnotes or references to other’s research, albeit he gives proper credit to the constituents of the religious theology. Depending on the threshold of a reader’s patience “hearing” another person’s opinion on their most personal innermost thoughts, this book will be either a mind changer or a dust collector. In either case, it will definitely be a game changer in the way you view your sexuality and the many, many ways of how you love.
