Turtle Feet: The Making and Unmaking of a Buddhist Monk

(Paperback)

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A brilliantly colorful memoir of becoming a monk and a young man's spiritual journey in India. Nikolai Grozni, a Boston jazzpiano prodigy struck by spiritual ennui, suddenly abandoned 15 years of music studies to seek out the Dalai Lama's university in India, where he began his quest for the ultimate truth. Instead of finding answers, Grozni fell in with an unusual cast of characters, and struggled with Buddhist logic and with the many small challenges to life as a monk in a community of Tibetan refugees.Turtle Feetis his bittersweet and funny memoir about the search for higher power, and the discovery of oneself amidst teeming, chaotic, and glorious humanity.

Reviews

"Skeptical and demystifying...intimate and precise."
-The New York Times Book Review

"[A] thoughtful, sharply funny memoir."
-People

"A rare and wonderful book, unlike anything I've ever read before."
-Anne Lamott

"Remarkable...I felt enlightened for having read it."
-A. J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically

Author Bio

Nikolai Grozni was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and educated in the United States and India. In previous incarnations, he has been a piano prodigy, jazz musician, and Buddhist monk. The author of three novels published in Bulgaria, Grozni holds an MFA from Brown University. He is married to the writer Danielle Trussoni. Turtle Feet is his first book of nonfiction.