Happy New Year folks. May we all enjoy a quality vintage in 2012. I think we’re all overdue for a good year.
As to my 2012 calendar, besides a move to New York, I have the joy of overseeing the birth of my second novel. On July 17, 2012, Scribner publishes BUDDHALAND BROOKLYN.
Here’s a taste of what to expect:
Featuring rich descriptions and a cast of eccentric characters, this is a contemporary fable about a Japanese Buddhist priest who ends up finding himself in the unlikeliest of places. Growing up in a quaint mountainside village in Japan, Seido Oda’s boyhood is spent fishing in clear mountainside streams and helping his parents run their small inn. At the age of eleven, Oda is sent to study with the monks at a nearby Buddhist temple. This peaceful, quiet refuge in the remote mountains of Japan is the only home the introverted monk has ever known until he approaches his fortieth birthday and is ordered by his superior to cross the ocean and open a temple in Brooklyn.
Ripped from the isolated, serene life of his homeland temple, Oda encounters a shock to the system in New York—a motley crew of American Buddhists whose misguided practices lead to a host of hilarious cultural misunderstandings. It is only when Oda comes to appreciate the Americans, flaws and all, that he sees his own shortcomings and finally finds that sense of belonging he has always sought.
A lively and vivid novel, this entertaining and edifying meditation on the meaning of true acceptance stirs from the very first page.
Tags: bestseller, Buddhaland Brooklyn, fiction, international, Scribner, Simon & Schuster
The cover looks great and the book sounds incredibly profound. Can’t wait.
Thanks. Hope you find it lives up to the wrapper.
I absolutely loved your book. Can you confirm that the scene in Harrods is acurate ie ‘Ostrich from Australia’…here we have emus, but the South Africans farm ostrich and perhaps export to Harrods.
Sorry, I’ve posted this on the wrong book. Should have been “The Hundred-Foot Journey’
I absolutely loved your book. Can you confirm that the scene in Harrods is acurate ie ‘Ostrich from Australia’…here we have emus, but the South Africans farm ostrich and perhaps export to Harrods.
Lesley – Thanks very much for your generous note. I suspect you might have caught me out on an error. You are quite right it is more logical an ostrich farm would have been in South Africa. But I can’t be sure, since I did take careful reporter’s notes in Harrods, doing research for that scene, and usually suppliers of exotic meats handle more than one form – i.e., ostrich, crocodile meat, porcupine, etc.. So it could be that the wholesale supplier was Australian and had sources his meats from different parts of the world. Sorry I cant give you a more definitive answer. Best, Richard
Quero um = I want one!