One day during my sabbaticals, I decided to take shelter in a small and distant Greek island without any person familiar to me. The idea was to write another boring book comparing Chinese and European philosophy that should, even more, frighten my students. But here, on this beautiful island (don’t ask me about its location, I want to stay alone here), everything went differently. Some strange ideas, thoughts, and vague images rose from inside my subconscious, exhausted from strict academic concepts. They did not fit into such a familiar strict scholarly context.

And I gave up the idea to write academic research for a while because academic writings are not the only way to express the eternal non-coincidence and, at the same time, mystical connections between western and eastern minds. And I decided that all of this is worth to become a fiction book that is not just a novel but a series of visions about historical coincidences.

This small island with people who are at the same time nice, naïve, and cunning cures me even better than the meditation that I regularly practice after my long sojourn in several Buddhist monasteries.

Every one of us needs a small island inside our mind to escape from the world’s madness. But you can meet with yourself face to face. And what you will see may not please you at all. This is the beginning of a long internal journey.