A. Scott Miller weaves biblical scripture and imaginative narrative into an exciting story of dramatic collision. The fast pace storytelling takes a snapshot of four very different lives.

Human experience is not confined to waking life. Do experiences in dreams matter? Humans are not the only living beings who have experiences. Does nonhuman experience matter? The Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu, writing during the late fourth and early fifth centuries C.E., argues in his work The Twenty Verses that these alternative contexts ought to inform our understanding of mind and world. Vasubandhu invites readers to explore experiences in dreams and to inhabit the experiences of nonhuman beings—animals, hungry ghosts, and beings in hell. Other Lives offers a deep engagement with Vasubandhu’s account of mind in a global philosophical perspective. Sonam Kachru takes up Vasubandhu’s challenge to think with perspective-diversifying contexts, showing how his novel theory draws together action and perception, minds and worlds. Kachru pieces together the conceptual system in which Vasubandhu thought to show the deep originality of the argument. He reconstructs Vasubandhu’s ecological concept of mind, in which mindedness is meaningful only in a nexus with life and world, to explore its ongoing philosophical significance. Engaging with a vast range of classical, modern, and contemporary Asian and Western thought, Other Lives is both a groundbreaking work in Buddhist studies and a model of truly global philosophy. The book also includes an accessible new translation of The Twenty Verses, providing a fresh introduction to one of the most influential works of Buddhist thought.

An examination of the ways in which new university students, such as women, indigenous and non-metropolitan, forge a place for themselves within university culture and pedagogy. This study has wide implications for ways of teaching, structuring and valuing tertiary knowledges.

An artist comes to his studio in the afternoon. On his doorstep he sees a woman with curly hair and a dark complexion. She is a total stranger to him, yet she embraces him; she knows him intimately. As he steps past her, two strange children rush to his feet, yelling “Daddy!” But he has never seen them before. On the other side of Cape Town, a white man pulls himself out of bed and toward his mirror, where a black face looks back at him. A concert pianist falls passionately in love with the celebrated singer he works beside but whom he is not allowed to touch. Then one night there is a shift in their worlds, and suddenly the past invades the present in a catastrophic confrontation. In each of the three parts of the novel characters discover that below the familiar surface of their lives lurk other, disconcerting lives which are revealed under the pressure of changed circumstances.

Marcus was a truly handsome young man. At 24 he was tall and of medium build. He had a clean shaven, slightly oval face whose clear features were framed by fine black hair which crept down under the collar of his T shirt covering and defining the strong, slender body beneath. His grey eyes shone with an intelligent intensity beneath fine black eyebrows and to look him in the eye was to leave one feeling that he had seen into ones very sole. He was articulate and charismatic and always seemed about to smile, but never did. I first met him on 2003. He had been in hospital and on his discharge and being unemployed the Social Services had accommodated him in a Bed and Breakfast. Now, some months later and having secured a job as a machinist he was going to have to vacate the B & B., and had, allegedly, heard that I had an empty apartment over my office. He wanted to rent it. In the event I decided not. I did not want to let it at that time, nor could he afford the rent. I had also noticed his arms.

No, Q was not a mere coincidence. Kajal felt a rapid pining for Q to see his work. He urgently needed her to. He was finally ready. Q..That night when I gave her the name, she had no voice or eyes or ears. She wasnt even an animal. She was just an object. A motif that defined a clan. Three individuals resolute minded Doctor, seemingly self-assured relationship-hopper Q and Kajal, an academic failure with growing-up ghosts are thrown into a tryst with circumstances, and layer by layer, they discover themselves more than they unravel each other. As fate leads Kajals life to intertwine with Qs in a way that both find their spaces in the world, Doctor is forced to face brutal realities of his own inadequacies, sending his life spiraling downward into darkness while still seeking the truth. Set in a palpable backdrop of northeast India and London, the non-linear narrative builds minor culminations while rippling to a climax that surprises and leaves a mixed after-taste. Separate Lives weaves the compelling tale of three everyday individuals as their distinct pasts, presents and futures collide, even as chance is the simultaneous protagonist and antagonist.

Read this an expansive meditation on death, grief and the limtless reach of the human spirit from the bestselling author of The Adversary ‘Compelling... Carrère has the gift of speaking simply and directly of the essentials’ Evening Standard Beset by arguments and the fear that things between them may be falling apart, writer Emmanuel Carrère and his partner, Hélène, journey to Sri Lanka to spend Christmas along the coast. But when the 2004 tsunami devastates the country, sweeping their friends’ young daughter away, the couple are bound in their search among the dead. As further tragedy strikes back home, with the news that Hélène’s sister is dying of cancer, Carrère turns his characteristic eye to the subject of these two lives, documenting the dramatic effect that their deaths have on those around them. Precise, sober, and suspenseful, Other Lives But Mine offers an intimate portrait of the fragility of life and the restorative processes of grief, that illuminates the astonishing richness of human connection.

Other Voices, Other Lives is a selection of poems, plays, and interviews drawn from over 40 years of work by one of America's most beloved and influential women of letters. Grace Cavalieri writes of women's lives, loves, and work in a multitude of voices. The book also includes interview excerpts from her public radio series, The Poet & the Poem. Her incisive interviews with Robert Pinsky, Lucille Clifton, and Josephine Jacobsen offer profound insights into the writing life.

When does a seed become a tree? Is there an exact moment? Didn’t your life on this earth begin as soon as you fell into your mother’s womb? As you know, you lived inside there for months, and during that, you didn’t breathe at all. You lived in an aquarium filled with some liquid. That liquid is what you are made of. Your eyes were shut, your nose was useless, you were able to say a word as much as a fish does, and were hearing your mother’s gas more than your father’s talks. You were moving in absolute darkness. That’s something you can’t achieve even if you close your eyes and cover them with your hands. One day you got out of there and vomited all that precious liquid out. Your life didn’t start as you emerged from that darkness; it ended, and you started another one. The life you mentioned didn’t start with a breath, it started with puke. Your life didn’t start with a movement. It started with a dream; a dream that has always been there, even before you were born. The question is: When did we stop following that dream?