The diaryarrived addressed to me, bearing a message:
We live forever through ourstories. Tell ours.

And so began the author's journeyinto the life and legends of the Naga a forgotten people living in the farnorth-east of India, struggling to survive in the modern world.

An extraordinarily powerful and evocative literarywork that traverses new ground in the hinterland between biography andmythology.

Nagaland is the story of Augustine and of theNaga people. With sensitively poetic prose, Doherty deftly draws the readerinto worlds of parallel realities. The love story, desperate and damned,destined for tragedy; forged and upheld against the wishes of family and thedictates of culture, with a backdrop of violence and reprisals amidst thebrutality of communal conflict. Alongside this is the telling of Augustine'schildhood story, growing up in the beautiful mountain state of Nagaland where the traditional way of life, loyalties and beliefs collidewith modern imperatives that, for many, lead inexorably to poverty,dislocation, drug addiction, disease and despair.

Seamlessly woventhrough each story, Naga legends and myths connect these disparate worlds, thesource of profound insights that are simultaneously confronting andtranscendent. Poignant and profound, the reader is left with a yearningnostalgia for a past where eternal truths prevailed, to be gleaned from ancientfables and sages; where a people lived in communities richly endowed withcultural and spiritual certainties, and were valued members of large family andtribal networks. Except, of course, if you choose not to follow the rules...

'A few years ago a hand written diary from Nagaland arrived in Ben Doherty's mailbox, 'Its pages...overfilled, and seemingly without order, with drawings of birds and mountains and flowers...and scrawled verses of poetry'. The poems were written in Tangkhul, one of Nagaland's many dialects. The final words were in English and read: 'We live forever through our stories. Tell ours.' In writing Nagaland, Doherty has managed to do that splendidly.' - Erich Mayer, ArtsHub