WORD Presents Jan-Philipp Sendker for The Long Path to Wisdom in Conversation with Lorie Karnath and Jonathan Sendker

• Books & Literature
• Free

Join us as we celebrate the latest project from beloved writer Jan-Philipp Sendker, author of the international bestseller The Art of Hearing Heartbeats and the highly praised sequel A Well-Tempered Heart. In The Long Path to Wisdom: Tales from Burma, Sendker and his colleagues Lorie Karnath and Jonathan Sendker bring to life a collection of ancient folk tales from Burma, granting a glimpse into the soul of its people.

Sendker and his colleagues collected the four dozen stories in The Long Path to Wisdom over visits to Burma spanning the last twenty years. Here, Sendker employs his knack for storytelling to imbue these narratives with life. Able to be enjoyed by adults and children alike, The Long Path to Wisdom incorporates tragic tales of lost children and lost love, of failed revenge and eternal suffering, but also of faith rewarded, justice, love, and happy ever after. Sometimes the lessons they convey are clear, others, more subtle, or some even crafted with a simple humor. While many of the stories will be unfamiliar, readers of folk stories such as Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, and even the wildly popular children’s story Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina, will be delighted at what they recognize in Burmese stories, not just in the plots, but in the underlying wisdom they strive to impart. The world portrayed in The Long Path to Wisdom manages to be foreign yet familiar, and also wholly absorbing, ultimately revealing that there is far more uniting than dividing us.