Sex Is Forbidden: A Novel

by Tim Parks

Overview

Sex is forbidden at the Dasgupta Institute, the Buddhist retreat where Beth Marriot has taken refuge. Beth has been working as a server in the kitchen, assisting the clients while also practicing meditation to calm her demons. Like the clients who pay to be there, the servers must observe the rules, and silence and separation of the sexes are chief among them.

But Beth is at a crossroads in her life. She came here torn between two lovers, estranged from her parents, and overwhelmed with guilt at possibly having caused a man’s death. Conflicted and wandering, she finds a forbidden diary in the men’s dorm and cannot keep away from it—or the man who wrote it. At the same time, desiring to achieve the inner peace that Buddhist practice promises, she yearns to follow the example set by the slim, silent, white-clad teacher Mi Nu—and may be yearning for something more. Funny and poignant, swiftly paced and completely engaging, Sex Is Forbidden is an entertaining novel about two profoundly different attitudes to life, and Beth is a character to be savored.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628725346
Publisher:	Arcade Publishing
Publication date:	04/21/2015
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Tim Parks is the author of more than twenty novels and works of nonfiction. His novels include Europa, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His most recent work of nonfiction is Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo. His essays have appeared regularly in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, for which he blogs. He lives in Italy.

Editorial Reviews

“Assured. Accomplished. Memorable . . . Parks gives us a glimpse of the titanic struggle of meditation, of the mind’s fluctuations under restraint, observing itself.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“It's a cracker—clever, funny and insightful, with complicated, conflicted and totally convincing Beth at its heart.”—Daily Mail

“Parks is very good at rubbing beliefs up against each other, which leads to subtle, unsettling questions. . . . Full of observations that are quirky, witty and deep.”—Sunday Herald

“Parks writes with detachment, wit, and intelligence, and the troubled voice in Beth is entirely convincing.”—Times (London)

“A wry and subtle story about what happens when the Western self tries to lose itself.”—Prospect

“An eminently readable and thought-provoking novel that teases you to the last page, and possibly beyond."—Spectator

“A thrilling novel by a master of the inner monologue who deals with his themes with great care and irony.”—Der Spiegel

“Highly entertaining.”—Süddeutsche Zeitung

“Tim Parks’s novel is impressive, sometimes wonderfully ironic, sometimes very much in despair, and then again restfully quiet.”—Die Zeit

From the Publisher