Scrolls of a Temple Sweeper
by Ninso John High
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Pub Date Nov 15 2023 | Archive Date Sep 06 2023
Wet Cement Press | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles
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Description
Scrolls of a Temple Sweeper is a novel of war, lost children, dream masters, a traveling circus, a theater troupe, a shaman, and a ghostwoman, told by a temple sweeper who has not spoken in twenty-five years. It's the quantum love story of a one-eyed boy and mute girl moving through time to an island monastery of refuge-where stones have become dreams, dreams have become bones, bones have become prayers and prayers have become us.
The Scrolls are replete with phantasmagorical elements in which even ghosts have flesh and blood, where crows speak, elephants and dragons wander in and out of the telling, and the Old Story, the scrolls themselves, unfold before us. Welding post-modernist narrative techniques to traditional discourse, High takes the reader on a most extraordinary journey: one of suffering and redemption, of beauty, radiance, hope and fierce love.
A Note From the Publisher
Hardcover (9798985620641)
Illustrated by Ninso John High
Hardcover (9798985620641)
Advance Praise
With gentleness and care, with extraordinary insight and far-sighted vision, John High’s luminous, Scrolls of a Temple Sweeper, is a journey that I hope everyone will take, an embrace that is wide enough for all the invisible cargo every reader brings. This is a book for anyone who has felt the pain of separation, the fear of the future, the loss of a country or a language or a loved one, the eerie and wondrous effervescence of waking up, the great surprise of finding a friend on the road, the joy of homecoming. Which is to say, this is a book for all of us.
—Karen Russell, author most recently of Sleep Donation, Orange World and Vampires in the Lemon Grove
This astonishing and dizzyingly extensive work smashes all barriers of time and space, so that by the time you are done with its dark & light pages full of multicolored ensō (Zen circle) art works, you don’t know who you are or where you have been, though its vividly realized scenes are stunningly clear. This wonderful book is itself an extended Zen koan that plays on the flute of traditional Zen literary tropes like a sincere virtuoso. Quite a read!
—Norman Fischer, poet, Zen priest, and author most recently of Men in Suits and When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflections from a Life In Zen
Grounded in radical presence, immanence and notational form, or as writer Zach Savich calls High’s concise imagism—a “neuro-cinematic syntax,” the Scrolls are dense with readerly pleasures—texts concentrate and re-distribute the reader’s attention, form clusters of story, and assemble image patterns that hold the imagination. We find an unshakeable pulse for the mind’s eye, attention to the seen and the scene, resources for understanding the text of the journey and the rich possibilities in language and art as a force for healing.
—Erica Hunt, poet, essayist, scholar, and author most recently of Jump the Clock: New & Selected Poems and Veronica: A Suite in X Parts
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9798985620610 |
| PRICE | $28.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 424 |
