Seeking Nibbana in Sri Lanka is a novel about an American Buddhist monk going to a remote forest hermitage to study under a meditation master, who is reputed to be fully enlightened. What begins as an idealistic search for nibbana turns into a realistic portrayal of life at a forest hermitage and the inner experience of meditation. The meditation master is also engaged in his own pursuit of nibbana, though his path is one of looking deeply into Buddhist teachings and questioning them thoroughly. The forest does not remain quiet for long, as others come into the world of the meditation master and his student, and a whole series of events, which are both serious and humorous, are set in motion.

Seeking Nibbana in Sri Lanka is a finely crafted novel that succeeds both as a work of literature and as a profound reflection on the nature of Buddhist spiritual experience. In following the young Western monk Sumana into the Sri Lankan jungle to meet his teacher Aggachitta, we are drawn into a world of conflicting perceptions, in which sincerity and self-doubt, the mundane and the transcendent, are woven together into a poignant and moving tapestry of intersecting human lives."

• Stephen Batchelor
• Author of Buddhism without Beliefs