'An understated masterpiece' San Francisco Chronicle 'Her wisdom is staggeringly beautiful, implicating each of us' Irish Times After the First World War, a group of young women is brought by boat from Japan to San Francisco. They are picture brides, promised the American Dream, clutching photographs of the husbands they have yet to meet, imagining uncertain futures on unknown shores. Struggling to master a new language and culture, they experience tremulous first nights as new wives, backbreaking work in the fields and in the homes of white women, and, later, the raising of children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history. And then war arrives once more. Julie Otsuka tells their extraordinary, heartbreaking story in this spellbinding and poetic account of strangers lost and alone in a new and deeply foreign land. 'A tender, nuanced, empathetic exploration of the sorrows and consolations of a whole generation of women' Daily Telegraph WINNER OF THE PEN FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION 2012 SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2011 SHORTLISTED FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE 2011

Combining memoir, history, and present-day narrative, this book describes how Buddhism is lived in Sri Lanka.

This title is an introduction to the philosophy of Buddhism centring on the teachings of Buddha whilst comparing and contrasting common themes that cut across Buddhism and Western philosophy. Each of the themes is discussed in relation to its impact on Western philosophy and philosophers.

Boston University Professor Malcolm David Eckel takes us on a contemporary quest to discover the essential meaning behind the Buddha's many representations. Eckel shows that the dimensions of early Indian Buddhism--popular art, conventional piety, and critical philosophy--all work together to express the same religious yearning for the fullness of emptiness that Buddha conveys.

Classical Tibetan Buddhist scriptures forbid the selling of Buddhist objects, and yet there is today a thriving market for Buddhist statues, paintings, and texts. In Buddha in the Marketplace, Alex John Catanese investigates this practice, which continues to be viewed as a form of "wrong livelihood" by modern Tibetan Buddhist scholars. Drawing on textual and historical sources, as well as ethnographic research conducted in the region of Amdo, Tibet, Catanese follows the trajectory of Buddhist objects from their status as noncommodities prior to the Cultural Revolution to their emergence as commodities on the open market in the modern period. The book examines why Tibetans have more recently begun to sell such objects for their personal livelihoods when their religious tradition condemns such business activities in the strongest possible terms. Addressing the various societal and religious ramifications of these commercial practices, Catanese illustrates how such activity is leading to significant cultural and economic changes, transforming the "moral economy" associated with Buddhist objects, and contributing to a reinterpretation of Tibetan Buddhist identity.