Turtle Feet: The Making and Unmaking of a Buddhist Monk

A brilliantly colorful memoir of becoming a monk and a young man’s spiritual journey in India.

Nikolai Grozni, a Boston jazz pianist prodigy struck by spiritual ennui, suddenly abandoned 15 years of music studies to seek out the Dalai Lama’s university in India, where he began his quest for the ultimate truth. Instead of finding answers, Grozni fell in with an unusual cast of characters, and struggled with Buddhist logic and with the many small challenges to life as a monk. This is his bittersweet and funny memoir about the search for higher power, and the discovery of oneself amidst teeming, chaotic, and glorious humanity.

‘Skeptical and demystifying…intimate and precise.’

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The New York Times Book Review

‘ A thoughtful, sharply funny memoir.’

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People

‘A rare and wonderful book, unlike anything I’ve ever read before.’

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Anne Lamott

‘Remarkable…… I felt enlightened for having read it.’

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A. J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically