No Traveller Returns
by Paul Park

Description:
What awaits us beyond the boundaries of death? What mysterious landscape, what punishing terrain? In this powerful new novella, Paul Park submits some answers, alternately menacing and absurd.

Encountering an ape-man in the mountains of North India, and then returning to America to experience the death of his old mentor Jim Carbone, our narrator finds himself dangerously susceptible to the attractions of the afterlife. When Jim passes away, our young man follows him to bring him back, entering a harsh borderland of high mountains, lunatic monasteries, evil instincts, totalitarian coercion, incomprehensible cities, fascist police, and beautiful women. In the end, his only chance of finding his way home lies with his friend, who has receded away from him, and yet is still able to dispatch a messenger to help him one last time.