The Messiah of Shangri-La

Book excerpt: After a year traveling around Asia, American author Joshua Parousios just wants to find a mountain cottage where he can write a novel about the Messiah. In Kathmandu he meets Maria, a bold Polish woman who attracts and repels him, and together they stay with a Bhutia family in Sosing, a picturesque Himalayan village in the Indian state of Sikkim. With a backdrop of snow-capped mountains and golden Buddhist temples in every direction, Sosing seems like a real-life Shangri-La. But Sikkim is known for human rights abuse, and Joshua learns that Indian soldiers are committing ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Lepcha people, pagans who missionaries have converted to Christianity. Struggling with writer's block and his passion for Maria, plagued by Dionysian dreams and enchanted by a Lepcha woman he glimpses in the forest, Joshua has increasingly bizarre experiences: time slows down, the dead appear as living, and a dense black fog just won't lift. As myth mixes with reality, a series of surreal events funnel to a wild, bacchanal finale. A deep physical and spiritual journey into the Himalayas, The Messiah of Shangri-La is a uniquely profound exploration of the mythologies that lie at the heart of the human experience.