The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: Sex Is Forbidden, Tim Parks

Sex Is Forbidden

Tim Parks

Sex is forbidden at the Dasgupta Institute, the Buddhist retreat where Beth Marriot has taken refuge. Beth has been working as a server in the kitchen, assisting the clients while also practicing meditation to calm her demons. Like the clients who pay to be there, the servers must observe the rules, and silence and separation of the sexes are chief among them.

But Beth is at a crossroads in her life. She came here torn between two lovers, estranged from her parents, and overwhelmed with guilt at possibly having caused a man's death. Conflicted and wandering, she finds a forbidden diary in the men's dorm and cannot keep away from it--or the man who wrote it. At the same time, desiring to achieve the inner peace that Buddhist practice promises, she yearns to follow the example set by the slim, silent, white-clad teacher Mi Nu--and may be yearning for something more. Funny and poignant, swiftly paced and completely engaging, Sex Is Forbidden is an entertaining novel about two profoundly different attitudes to life, and Beth is a character to be savored.

Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction--novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Arcade Publishing
  • Publish Date: Apr 21st, 2015
  • Pages: 304
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.20in - 5.40in - 1.00in - 0.60lb
  • EAN: 9781628725346
  • Categories: WomenLiterary

About the Author

Parks, Tim: - Tim Parks is the author of more than twenty novels and works of nonfiction. His novels include Europa, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His most recent work of nonfiction is Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo. His essays have appeared regularly in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, for which he blogs. He lives in Milan, Italy.

More books by Tim Parks

Book Cover for: Last Vanities: Stories, Fleur Jaeggy
Book Cover for: Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: A Season with Verona: A Soccer Fan Follows His Team Around Italy in Search of Dreams, National Character, And... Goals!, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: The Scheme of Things, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: Another Literary Tour of Italy, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: An Italian Education: The Further Adventures of an Expatriate in Verona, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: Teach Us to Sit Still: A Skeptic's Search for Health and Healing, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: Life and Work: Writers, Readers, and the Conversations Between Them, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: Where I'm Reading from: The Changing World of Books, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: Destiny, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: Cara Massimina, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: Out of My Head: On the Trail of Consciousness, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: A Literary Tour of Italy, Tim Parks
Book Cover for: Pen in Hand: Reading, Rereading and Other Mysteries, Tim Parks

Praise for this book

"Assured. Accomplished. Memorable . . . Parks gives us a glimpse of the titanic struggle of meditation, of the mind's fluctuations under restraint, observing itself." --Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"It's a cracker--clever, funny and insightful, with complicated, conflicted and totally convincing Beth at its heart."--Daily Mail

"Parks is very good at rubbing beliefs up against each other, which leads to subtle, unsettling questions. . . . Full of observations that are quirky, witty and deep."--Sunday Herald

"Parks writes with detachment, wit, and intelligence, and the troubled voice in Beth is entirely convincing."--Times (London)

"A wry and subtle story about what happens when the Western self tries to lose itself."--Prospect

"An eminently readable and thought-provoking novel that teases you to the last page, and possibly beyond.--Spectator

"A thrilling novel by a master of the inner monologue who deals with his themes with great care and irony."--Der Spiegel

"Highly entertaining."--Süddeutsche Zeitung

"Tim Parks's novel is impressive, sometimes wonderfully ironic, sometimes very much in despair, and then again restfully quiet."--Die Zeit