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Publisher’s Comments
In this, his second novel Don Don, Nick Taussig provides
a meditation on death from two very different and interconnected
perspectives. There is the immortal, rapacious American millionaire
Don Holmes, for whom death comes as an affront, and there is the
noble and benevolent Thai Buddhist monk Ajahn Dohn, for whom death
comes as the fate of all that lives.
Once both men know that they are dying, they set out on
contrasting journeys. Don Holmes descends into hedonism
and excess before seeking spiritual renewal and making a
dignified attempt to reconcile himself with those he'll leave
behind, whereas Ajahn Dohn journeys from the temple to the
city, moving from a quiet acceptance of his imminent death
to a rousing need to re-immerse himself in the material and
sensual world.
These comparative stories vary and diverge throughout,
before finally knitting back together to give the novel a neat
figure-of-eight shape. Though the two men at first seem so
diametrically opposed in outlook and again at their first
fractious meeting, by the end they have almost merged into
one.
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