‘Here is a new young voice in British fiction – entertaining, provocative and original. Jake Wallis Simons will surely prove a name to remember.’ – Beryl Bainbridge
‘Simons has to be the most exciting new writer to appear this year’ – Tom Boncza-Tomaszewski, The Independent on Sunday
What would it be like to live – literally – into your own family’s past? What would it be like to watch everyone around you slowly getting younger? What would it be like to be a Tibetan Jew?
The Exiled Times of a Tibetan Jew is a startlingly original tragicomedy based around a fictional Tibeto-Jewish refugee community in London.
The novel is peopled with a variety of absurd yet always human characters, from an old, silent grandfather who communicates only via a typewriter to a half-Tibetan chain smoker, to a skinny brothel mistress, to a charismatic Tibetan ‘rabbi’ who declares himself to be the reincarnation of Moses. This world provides a rich and thought-provoking backdrop for an investigation into culture, heritae and identity that will make you swing between vigorous chuckles and troubled chin-stroking.
Jake Wallis Simons lives in North London. He has a rich and varied ethnic background – a unique Burmese / English / Scottish / Jewish cocktail. Before going to Oxford where he read English, he lived in Taiwan for two years, where he studied Mandarin Chinese. Alongside his university studies, he developed a fascination with Buddhism, and has been studying and practising it ever since.