Shrove Tuesday

 "HE HAD COME TO ASIA TO MEDITATE. I JOKED THAT HE HAD STAYED TO FORNICATE." 

D.B.Noel, sixty-year-old teacher of English at a Christian college in northern Thailand, had come to Asia seeking spiritual enlightenment. A self-declared Buddhist and author of several books on the subject, Noel nevertheless displays an attachment to women and drink that is greater than his drive for spirtual experience. This "tyranny of the senses" leads to his eventual downfall.

Told by a younger colleague, who is experiencing a failed relationship with an attractive Thai student, Noel's story is the centerpiece of this haunting novella about decline and loss in a land far from home.