Tulku (novel)

Tulku is a children's historical novel by Peter Dickinson, published by Gollancz in 1979. Set in China and Tibet at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, it features a young teenage boy orphaned by the violence, who flees with others to a Buddhist monastery. Dickinson and Tulku won two major awards for British children's books, the Whitbread Children's Book Award and the Carnegie Medal. The Carnegie Medal from the Library Association then recognised the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject.

Dutton published a U.S. edition within the calendar year under its Unicorn imprint.

Plot summary

Thirteen-year-old Theodore lives in a remote region of China at his father's Mission. When the violence of the Boxer Rebellion finally reaches them, Theodore escapes alone from its destruction. He soon becomes one companion of a formidable Englishwoman, "painted, blasphemous, gun-toting Mrs Jones". She is an amateur botanist and a former actress with an entourage.

The party flees bandits into Tibet and take refuge at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. Theodore is briefly seen to be the Tulku, a great lama reincarnated; then the recently conceived child of Mrs Jones and her Chinese lover is identified as the one. Theodore is exposed to the "magnetic, repugnant rituals of Buddhism" and develops as a "whole, willing Christian". Mrs Jones is recruited to remain on site and the boy finally returns to England with the fruit of her botanical expedition.

Tulku (film)

Tulku is a 2009 documentary film, written and directed by Gesar Mukpo. The film details the personal experiences of five young Western men who were identified in childhood as being tulkus, or reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist masters.

For over 700 years tulkus have been sought out as highly revered leaders and teachers of Tibetan Buddhism. Beginning in the 1970s, several tulkus have been identified as having incarnated in the West. These new, Western-born, very modern tulkus lead lives prone to culture clash and identity confusion.

Background

Gesar Mukpo, who wrote and directed Tulku, was born in 1973, the son of world-renowned Tibetan Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his British wife Diana. At the age of three, Mukpo was identified by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche as the reincarnation of the late Shechen Kongtrul Rinpoche (the Jamgon Kongtrul of Shechen), one of his own father's teachers in Tibet. Three-year-old Gesar was then enthroned as a tulku in Berkeley, California.

In the film, Mukpo's British mother describes her scandalous marriage to a Tibetan monk, and her vision in a dream of a being who asked to be her son. When Gesar was born and was identified as a tulku, his father believed he could be a great teacher, but did not send him away to a monastery, believing it would separate him from his environment too much.

*** (novel)

*** is Michael Brodsky's fifth novel. The title consists of precisely three asterisks, as mentioned on the book's copyright page as part of its Library of Congress cataloguing information.

The book centers on Stu Potts, working for Dov Grey, captain of industry, creating ***s out of raws. No underlying meanings for "***", nor for "raw", both of which occur frequently in the text, are directly suggested. Readers are left to struggle on their own. One reviewer suggested "*** seem to be (depending on the passage and on the mood of the reader) archetypal widgets, phenotypes or, occasionally, art."

*** is also metafictional. The novel begins with a "PROLOGUE" title page. No other title page appears in the novel, as if the entire novel is prologue. Early on, a short chapter consisting of instructions on the assembly of the book's "thought packets" is provided, offering contradictory advice. Towards the end, alternative plot lines are suggested and discarded, left for "the next time the story is told."

Novel

A novel is a long narrative, normally in prose, which describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story.

The genre has also been described as possessing "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years". This view sees the novel's origins in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modern romance, and the tradition of the novella. The latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. Ian Watt, however, in The Rise of the Novel (1957) suggests that the novel first came into being in the early 18th century,

Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era; the first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605.

The romance is a closely related long prose narrative. Walter Scott defined it as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", whereas in the novel "the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society". However, many romances, including the historical romances of Scott,Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, are also frequently called novels, and Scott describes romance as a "kindred term". Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo."

Novel (musician)

Alonzo Mario Stevenson, (born September 3, 1981) professionally known as Novel, is an American hip-hop/soul artist based in Los Angeles, California. He is a Grammy Award winning songwriter, singer, rapper and producer with also 5 Grammy nominations. He is the son of Motown's William "Mickey" Stevenson and the grandson of soul pioneer Solomon Burke.

Novel has collaborated with artists such as Lauryn Hill and Talib Kweli, and worked with other musicians including Joell Ortiz, Joss Stone, David Guetta, India.Arie, Tweet, Stacie Orrico and Smokey Robinson and others. He has received over 5 Grammy nominations and 1 win in all different categories and is considered very versatile for writing & producing in the Pop genre, Alternative, Rock, Hiphop, R&B, even Jazz, Dance, Electronic, Including gospel, and currently working on country.

Biography

Alonzo Mario Stevenson was born in Los Angeles, California, son of William "Mickey" Stevenson, Motown singer/songwriter/producer and the label's first A&R executive, and Melanie Burke, a background singer for Chaka Khan. Stevenson, also the grandson of soul music pioneer Solomon Burke, grew up with his mother in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and North Carolina, sometimes staying in shelters because they had no money. A friend of Stevenson's in Philadelphia nicknamed him "Novel" because he always carried a notebook. After running away from home at age 14, Novel returned to California where his father set up a recording studio for him. He released a single, "Peach", on Rawkus Records in 2003. The video for the song features Smokey Robinson, a longtime family friend and Novel's godfather.Vibe called the song's melody "infectious" and Novel's vocals "seductive", but Novel almost didn't release the single because he "felt it was bubble gum". His debut album The Word was set to be released in 2003 but was ultimately cancelled when Rawkus split from MCA Records, which folded that year.