Asian absences

This contemplative and lyrical narrative of a journey from Copenhagen to Eastern Asia evades simple conclusions to vividly capture the conflicting emotional and intellectual responses of a stranger in distant lands, evoking both the exotic wonder and threatening otherness of unfamiliar cultures and repeatedly challenging mythic assumptions about the East. Via an abandoned hospital for lepers, a hallucinogenic mountain pilgrimage with shamans in Kathmandu, and the "beautifully odd" curiositiesof Tokyo's metropolis, Wolfgang Büscher takes his reader on a journey of enlightenment that is both troubling and beautiful. Wolfgang Büscher is an award-winning journalist who writes for theFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, among others. He won the Theodor-Wolff Prize for Reportage in 2002.