“The action for this novel takes place in the fateful year of 2001, which begins with the Gujarat earthquake in Western India and ends with the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Between these two defining events, one natural and the other caused by men, the destinies of a disparate group of individuals play out in the holy town of Bodhgaya, in the poorest of India's states. People come from everywhere to hear the spiritual teachings of a world Teacher, who never arrives...While people wait, they invent their own salvations, their own paths to freedom, their own forms for the living of truth. But which of them can tell, or know, which is best? In this complex fabric some, like Silas, seek renunciation but find truth in love, others like Reality seek it in love but find it in sacrifice. Kasyapa's Smile tells the story of them and many others who come to the matrix of all search and all freedom, Mother India, and find in her million mysteries the answering echoes to their first, and last, questions.”

“The Interloper tells the story of a man who wakes up in a world that has seen disaster and war he can only guess at. As he tries to piece his reality back together, he doesn't even know if he is really alive, or dead. Finding himself involved in a civil war to bring justice and peace back to this shattered, anonymous country, he also finds love, and unforeseen challenges still to meet, when he must carry out a strange task on behalf of the fugitive members of the resistance forces. And though he again loses everything he might have relied upon, he stumbles on something else unexpected, that alters the future forever…

About the author

MARTIN KOVAN is an Australian writer living in Paris. He has written fiction and non-fiction published in India, Australia, the USA and France. He completed an English M.A. with the Buddhist poet Gary Snyder at UC Davis, and is currently completing research for a PhD. in Buddhist Studies. His fictional interests include a focus on the nature of secular spirituality, freedom and the ethics of power in the 21st century world. He is currently working with the American spiritual and social activist Alan Clements in support of a World Dharma that might unite many disparate voices towards a unified expression of global peace.