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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