Master of the Moon

What is the truth about love? What, indeed, is the truth about anything? A Brahmin astrologer points Frank in the direction of answers to these questions, but he discovers that there's more to love and truth than meets the eye. Drawing on the author's experiences as a UN volunteer in Kathmandu during its hippy heyday in the late '60s, Master of the Moon interweaves two narratives: a search for love against the backdrop of an exotic and unspoilt Kathmandu valley, and a search for truth...
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What is the truth about love? What, indeed, is the truth about anything? A Brahmin astrologer points Frank in the direction of answers to these questions, but he discovers that there's more to love and truth than meets the eye. Drawing on the author's experiences as a UN volunteer in Kathmandu during its hippy heyday in the late '60s, Master of the Moon interweaves two narratives: a search for love against the backdrop of an exotic and unspoilt Kathmandu valley, and a search for truth on a pilgrimage to a holy lake in the mountains. His passionate and fraught affair with the beautiful Sunita is opposed by interfering family and colleagues, while his friendship with Kalpana gives Sunita cause for concern. To complicate matters, Frank is friends with Kalpana's charismatic husband, Tashi, who loves women indiscriminately and voraciously.Brushing aside Sunita's pleas for him not to go, Frank sets off with his friend Hamish on a trek into the mountains to find the astrologer's lake. Informed by their encounters with Hindu and Buddhist practices and beliefs, they chew over issues of belief, religion, science and philosophy. Hamish contends that truth can only be dug out of reality. But what is real about reality? Frank believes that intuitions can feel the way to truth. But which intuitions? And whose? With his philosophical and physical journeys converging on the lake, an alarming experience diverts his thoughts urgently back to Sunita.