The Long Path to Wisdom

From the author of the internationally bestselling Art of Hearing Heartbeats series, a charming collection of folktales that offer a window into Burma's fascinating history and culture.Since 1995 Jan-Philipp Sendker has visited Myanmar (Burma) dozens of times, and while doing research for his novels The Art of Hearing Heartbeats and A Well-Tempered Heart, he encountered numerous fairy tales and fables. These moving stories speak to the rich mythology of the diverse peoples of Burma, the spirituality of humankind, and the profound social impact Buddhist thinking has had over centuries. Some are so strange he couldn't classify them or identify a familiar moral, while others reminded him of the fairy tales of his childhood, except that here monkeys, tigers, elephants, and crocodiles inhabited the fantastic lands instead of hedgehogs, donkeys, or geese. The teachings they convey resemble those of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen,...