This post has been updated on June 9, 2021. See the new version here.
October 19, 2020
This book was first announced about a year ago. During the period, I have learned a thing or two of importance, among which: publishing is a slow-moving business!
I was still hunting for a Publisher — a gruesome task — and wondering if there would ever be a Publishing House bold enough to take the plunge and back me up, taking into account a story-telling that might appear a bit... strange.
With The Sun-Eyed Children scheduled to be launched in the first quarter of 2021, it is time to update, and bring us all up to speed...
Towards the end of 2019, it suddenly happened. Not once, but twice.
I was favoured with a choice between two Publishers! And so, by early 2020, a contract was signed with Leadstart Publishing, Mumbai. A long period of editing followed, that saw the manuscript moving back and forth between Mumbai and various parts of the subcontinent, through the annoying disturbances of a pandemic; hectic lockdowns, an exile and a return. However, there was something to gain from these adverse circumstances: during this lengthy process, the book's quality dramatically improved, both in story content and structure.
September 1, 2019 (edited October 19, 2020)
Wrapping up two years of work (or so I thought at the time!) on a novel — or is it a memoir? Or both? Wondering on which bookshelf it will land, I am inclined to think of it as "A Saga of Spiritual Adventure across Space and Time"...
The book is written as a novel, inspired by auto-biographical memories interwoven with fiction. It contains about 400 pages and encompasses 36 chapters.
Here goes the (updated) back-cover description:
"December 1970, midnight. In a deserted Munich suburb, at a gloomy bus stop, a young rebel shivers under persistent sleet. His long hair gathers icicles while he ponders: should he burn his bridges and flee impending prison time? As the bus appears out of the swirling mist and stops, he shakes off any lingering self-doubt and steps in.
Little does he know he is embarking on an adventure far more demanding than his free spirit can imagine. It is the start of a journey that will take him half-way round the globe to distant India and the most remote reaches of the Himalayas. Embracing the life of a spiritual mendicant, he is forced into choices he never knew himself capable of, as he plunges headlong into a Quest that began centuries ago, and may find its conclusion in a far-off, uncharted future.
Only when he confronts the spectre of violent death, will he understand that all his life experiences must be integrated into one rich, all-encompassing Sweep of Existence that stretches infinitely across the ages, in an unstoppable ascent of perpetual evolution."
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