Before you go...
Check Out
The Bestselling Books of All Time
See the List

Bones of the Master

A Journey to Secret Mongolia

By George Crane

By George Crane

Best Seller
Paperback $18.00

May 29, 2001 | ISBN 9780553379082

Bones of the Master by George Crane
Paperback $18.00
May 29, 2001 | ISBN 9780553379082

Also available from:

Paperback
–

  • Paperback $18.00

    May 29, 2001 | ISBN 9780553379082

    Also available from:

Buy the Paperback:

About Bones of the Master

In 1959 a young monk named Tsung Tsai (Ancestor Wisdom) escapes the Red Army troops that destroy his monastery, and flees alone three thousand miles across a China swept by chaos and famine. Knowing his fellow monks are dead, himself starving and hunted, he is sustained by his mission: to carry on the teachings of his Buddhist meditation master, who was too old to leave with his disciple.

Nearly forty years later Tsung Tsai — now an old master himself — persuades his American neighbor, maverick poet George Crane, to travel with him back to his birthplace at the edge of the Gobi Desert.

They are unlikely companions. Crane seeks freedom, adventure, sensation. Tsung Tsai is determined to find his master’s grave and plant the seeds of a spiritual renewal in China. As their search culminates in a torturous climb to a remote mountain cave, it becomes clear that this seemingly quixotic quest may cost both men’s lives.

Read An Excerpt

About George Crane

George Crane is a poet as well as a translator of poems from the Chinese (A Thousand Pieces of Snow, co-authored with Tsung Tsai). He lives in upstate New York. Bones of the Master is his first nonfiction work.

Product Details

Category: Religion | Asian World History

Paperback | $18.00
Published by Bantam
May 29, 2001 | 320 Pages | 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 | ISBN 9780553379082

People Who Read Bones of the Master Also Read

‹ ›
Atlas of a Lost World
Black Dragon River
Stringer
The Wet and the Dry
The Footloose American
Naples Declared
National Geographic Secrets of the National Parks
An Armenian Sketchbook
For All the Tea in China
Book Lust To Go
The Lost Art of Walking
First Stop in the New World
A Blue Hand
Longing for Darkness
Omoo
Fly Solo
What Every American Should Know About Europe
All You Need to Be Impossibly French
American Places
A Field Guide to Getting Lost
The Heart of the World
Paris
The Reluctant Tuscan
Pardon My French
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
C'est La Vie
Surviving the Extremes
Hotel Babylon
Sea of Glory
Join Me!
The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo
Skipping Towards Gomorrah
The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons
Utopia
The Histories
America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
In Patagonia
The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek
Brit-Think, Ameri-Think
Salt
In Search of Captain Zero PA
Catch Me If You Can
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Italian Hours
Cloud Forest

Inspired by Your Browsing History

Praise

"A jewel … firmly in the company of Matthiessen, Chatwin, and O’Hanlon."
— Parabola

"A fascinating, beautifully written account of a great (and delightful) Ch’an master’s return pilgrimage to remote Inner Mongolia after forty years of exile."
— Peter Matthiessen, author of The Snow Leopard

"Crane chronicles their perilous and miraculous adventures, the beauty of Mongolia’s wilderness of wind and sand, and Tsung Tsai’s transcendent determination with uncommon clarity, wit, vitality, and love."
— Booklist (starred review)

"A search for lost time, which the author recounts with haunting brilliance."
— Richmond Times-Dispatch

"As if a Ch’an master stepped out of the ancient tales and took you on a journey both moving and inspiring."
— Jack Kornfield, author of After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

Named "Best Spiritual Book of the Year" by Beliefnet.com

Back to Top

Visit other sites in the Penguin Random House Network

Brightly

Raise kids who love to read
TASTE img

TASTE

An online magazine for today’s home cook

LitFlash

The eBooks you want at the lowest prices

Read it Forward

Read it first. Pass it on!