Today is the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. It marks the beginning of longer days with more light, which is great if you love reading. I have three fresh novels to add to my TBR list for the summer and I’m excited to share them with you. Reviews will follow, but I’ll leave the post dates flexible so I can get away from my desk and have some fun in the great outdoors while the weather is nice.
Without further ado, here is my list in alphabetical order by author name, with a few sentences about my initial thoughts on the novels followed by the book blurbs given on Amazon. Click on the book images for links to Amazon for purchasing.
Heart Sutra: A Novel by Yan Lianke, translated by Carlos Rojas. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2020 (English translation 2023).
I am eager to get further into Yan Lianke’s new novel. He is, afterall, a multi-prize winning and internationally acclaimed novelist whose highly satirical work has garnered both censure and praise. In fact, this novel is unable to be published in Lianke’s native China.
From Amazon:
At the Religious Training Center on the campus of Beijing’s National Politics University, disciples of China’s five main religions—Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam—gather for a year of intensive study and training. In this hallowed yet jovial atmosphere, the institute’s two youngest disciples—Yahui, a Buddhist jade nun, and Gu Mingzheng, a Daoist master—fall into a fast friendship that might bloom into something more.
This year, however, the worldly Director Gong has an exciting new plan: he has organized tug-of-war competitions between the religions. The fervor of competition offers excitement for the disciples, as well as a lucrative source of fundraising, but Yahui looks on the games with distrust: her beloved mentor collapsed after witnessing one of these competitions. Gu Mingzheng, meanwhile, has his own mission at the institute, centering on his search for his unknown father. Soon it becomes clear that corruption is seeping ever more deeply into the foundation of the institute under Director Gong’s watch, and Yahui and Gu Mingzheng will be forced to ask themselves whether it is better to stay committed to an increasingly fraught faith or to return to secular life forever—and nothing less than the fate of the gods itself is at stake.
Illustrated throughout with beautiful original papercuts, animated by Yan Lianke’s characteristically incisive sense of humor, Heart Sutra is a stunning and timely novel that highlights the best and worst in mankind and interrogates the costs of division.
The Horsemaster’s Daughter: A Novel by Elles Lohuis. Black Peony Press, 2022.
I was so pleased that Elles Lohuis reached out to me here on the Buddhist Fiction Blog about her Tibetan Buddhist historical fiction series. So far, the first few pages of the story reveal that Lohuis has done her research and she knows how to deftly position her reader. The story of young protagonist Nordun, the horsemaster’s daughter, is written in engaging first person prose that feels as if she is telling her story to a new acquaintance who has the potential to become a dear friend.
From Amazon: Tibet, 1285 – Hidden away in her grandmother’s monastery after her mother’s tragic death, Nordun’s life has been shrouded in secrets. Born into a family of royal horse masters, she was divined to become the first ever female horse master—but that destiny was never shared with her.
Now the karmic winds are blowing, and Nordun is riding home where she’s challenged by friends and foes to do the impossible—claim her heritage to the stables.
The last thing Nordun wants is to tame a feral horse… but if she refuses, her cherished childhood home could be lost.
Desperately unprepared and armed with only her compassionate heart, Nordun ventures into the far and rugged unknown.
Will she fulfill the ancient divination and turn the tables on her family’s fate, or return to her sisters in solitude to serve all sentient beings as has been her aspiration for most of her life?
Aided by unconventional allies, Nordun soon learns that you never have to question your path, as long as you’re true to your wild and tender heart.
Join Nordun on her reluctant quest through the turbulent times of thirteenth-century Tibet with its royal clans, Mongolian invaders, smugglers and SilkRoad traders, to the places where demons lurk, and through the trials which afflict every family and human life—courage and cowardice, love and lust, loyalty and treachery, and cruel endings which do not always sprout into the new beginnings we desire them to be. Get your copy now.
The Horse Master’s Daughter is Book 1 in the historical fiction series Nordun’s Way, and can be read as a stand-alone novel.
The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women by Vanessa R. Sasson. Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publishing, 2023.
Fresh off the press last month is Sasson’s second hagiographical fiction novel about early Buddhist women. I was privileged to read an ARC of this novel and I am ever so patiently awaiting my paperback copy, because a book in the hand is worth two in my digital library. Sasson’s writing is transportive. She employs simile and metaphor to their fullest extents such that they simultaneously immerse the reader into the socio-temporal context of the earliest Buddhist women, construct complex yet relatable characters, and breathe fresh vitality into the unfolding of a complicated event in Buddhist history.
From Amazon: The Gathering is a retelling of the story of the first Buddhist women’s request for ordination. Inspired by the Therigatha and building on years of research and experience in the field, Sasson follows Vimala, Patachara, Bhadda Kundalakesa, and many others as they walk through the forest to request full access to the tradition.
The Buddha’s response to this request is famously complicated; he eventually accepts women into the Order, but specific and controversial conditions are attached. Sasson invites us to think about who these first Buddhist women might have been, what they might have hoped to achieve, and what these conditions might have meant to them thereafter. By shaping her research into a story, Sasson invites readers to imagine a world that continues to inspire and complicate Buddhist narrative to this day.
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