An Indian man writes to a Japanese woman. She writes back. Romance blossoms between the two, the pen-friends exchange vows over letters, then spend the next fifteen years as a married couple without ever setting eyes on each other, until the intimacy of words is tested finally by the intimacy of life. Like The Japanese Wife, the other stories in this collection are also about residents and non-residents. In Grateful Ganga, an American rock queen shares her love tunes with a Punjabi businessman even as she mourns her dead husband; in Snakecharmer, a retired Israeli American professor arrives in India with the intention of committing suicide, only to be saved by a snakecharmers daughter. Father Tito, the emigre Yugoslav of Father Titos Onion Rings, is haunted by the Holocaust as he intercedes between Hindu and Muslim rioters. The stories here are about unexpected love and accidental gifts; about finding oneself among strangers; about living elsewhere and living in ones dreams. They parade a full cast of priests, whores, rebels, dead emperors, bush soldiers, poachers, conmen and connoisseurs-angels and demons rubbing shoulders with those whose lives are never quite as ordinary as they seem.

Married to a Zen monk in training, an American woman in Japan chronicles her own year of growth and discovery In February 2004, when her American husband, a recently ordained Zen monk, leaves home to train for a year at a centuries-old Buddhist monastery, Tracy Franz embarks on her own year of Zen. An Alaskan alone—and lonely—in Japan, she begins to pay attention. My Year of Dirt and Water is a record of that journey. Allowed only occasional and formal visits to see her cloistered husband, Tracy teaches English, studies Japanese, and devotes herself to making pottery. Her teacher instructs her to turn cup after cup—creating one failure after another. Past and present, East and West intertwine as Tracy is twice compelled to return home to Alaska to confront her mother’s newly diagnosed cancer and the ghosts of a devastating childhood. Revolving through the days, My Year of Dirt and Water circles hard questions: What is love? What is art? What is practice? What do we do with the burden of suffering? The answers are formed and then unformed—a ceramic bowl born on the wheel and then returned again and again to dirt and water.

My Pimp Wife is the raw, lasciviously juicy tale of how my loving wife evolved into a cold, heartless pimp and the core primary reason that I chose to write this book is that, as A Grand Inquisitor Level Pimpnological Decryptologist, in the public interest, I wanted to write about one of the more common, yet rarely recognized, ominous aspects of earnestly aspiring to be a true master Pimp.

Agastya Sen, known to friends by the English name August, is a child of the Indian elite. His friends go to Yale and Harvard. August himself has just landed a prize government job. The job takes him to Madna, “the hottest town in India,” deep in the sticks. There he finds himself surrounded by incompetents and cranks, time wasters, bureaucrats, and crazies. What to do? Get stoned, shirk work, collapse in the heat, stare at the ceiling. Dealing with the locals turns out to be a lot easier for August than living with himself. English, August is a comic masterpiece from contemporary India. Like A Confederacy of Dunces and The Catcher in the Rye, it is both an inspired and hilarious satire and a timeless story of self-discovery.

Based on research over a six-year period into three age groups of women, this important new study offers in depth analysis for the first time of the experience of expatriate Japanese wives living temporarily in the United Kingdom. It focuses on the roles of the ‘housewife’ in the context of the changing status of women in contemporary Japan.