ECSTASY: A Novel

From the author of the acclaimed first novel, 'The Ascetic of Desire,' comes a book that is 'subtle yet deeply tantalizing' ('Asian Age'). Sudhir Kakar, a renowned psychoanalyst, brings a penetrating understanding of the human psyche to his new novel while exploring the nuances of philosophy and religion. Gopal-or Ram Das Baba, as his devotees refer to him-is the son of a devout Brahmin family who has spent a lifetime seeking the ultimate truth of spiritual knowledge. His journey as a mystic is filled with illuminating visions, severe tribulations, and an unwavering faith, and he fulfills his destiny as a highly evolved Sadhu through ordeals of monastic bliss, tantric awakening, madness, and transexuality. As his life nears its end he meets a young man who belongs to a very different India. A profound relationship develops. In an age that dismisses divine vision as hallucination, and the desire for a union with God as a symptom of mental illness, Sudhir Kakar's richly detailed novel explores the mind-bending issues that plague the life of the modern thinker. Here are the struggles between emotion and reason; faith and logic-the fundamental questions that carry one from agony to ecstasy and back again.