{"product_id":"kingdom-of-ten-thousand-things-gary-geddes","title":"Kingdom Of Ten Thousand Things","description":"Subtitled \"An Impossible Journey from Kabul to Chiapas,\" this engaging travel memoir by one of Canada's best-known poets covers a lot of ground. Following in the faded (and perhaps fictional) footsteps of a 5th-century Buddhist monk, Huishen, the author travels from Afghanistan along the old Silk Road into China, crosses the Pacific on a container ship, and eventually ends up in Mexico and British Columbia. Geddes travels this long and fascinating road to explore possible proofs for Asian contact with the New World before Columbus. The inspiration for the journey comes from an ancient Chinese account that told of Huishen's disappearance over the eastern seas and his eventual return after 41 years.  Appropriately, Geddes's journey itself is more intriguing than his reason for the journey. He meets a trainload of quirky characters along the way, especially in China and Pakistan. Throughout, the writing is literate, humane, humorous, and compulsively readable. In a few deft lines about a boy trying to sell him a homemade knife, Geddes elicits from the reader a genuine feeling for the desperate plight of Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Whether regarding the Taklamakan Desert or a Kentucky Fried Chicken shop in China, Geddes remains refreshingly self-deprecating: numerous bouts with diarrhea are just part of \"the romance of the Silk Road\" where bus drivers are \"guided by radar rather than eyesight.\" He is also capable of some striking insights: early representations of the Buddha as \"a wheel, a riderless horse, a footprint, or an empty chair ... seemed more in keeping with the spirit of the religion\" rather than icon-laden later images. Geddes never succeeds in finding conclusive proof of his thesis on Huishen, but in the end it doesn't matter. --Mark Frutkin\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/strong\u003e Gary Geddes\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e Phyllis Bruce Books\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYear:\u003c\/strong\u003e 2005\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Phyllis Bruce Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45681379803327,"sku":"9780002001007","price":7.0,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0700\/1060\/1663\/files\/view_archive_156d2595-a036-4f0d-8a65-3735be97fcae.jpg?v=1780468537","url":"https:\/\/www.blendedbooknook.com\/products\/kingdom-of-ten-thousand-things-gary-geddes","provider":"Blended Book Nook","version":"1.0","type":"link"}