After a health scare leaves him reeling, Eric Weiner-an atheist by default-sets out on a worldwide search for an experience of the divine. Propelled by the confrontation with his own mortality and questions about the best way to raise his daughter, Weiner travels to Nepal, where he meditates with Tibetan lamas and a guy named Wayne; to Turkey, where he whirls (poorly) with Sufi dervishes; to China where he attempts to unblock his chi; to Israel where he studies...
Jonathan Hughes, an anthropologist specialising in social stereotyping, is determined to re-examine this case. There were alarming disparities in the evidence and Hughes has little doubt that there has been a terrible miscarriage of justice. But there is also something else pushing this half-Iranian, half-Libyan outsider to reach for the truth . . . This is more than a mere expose of corruption, it is a dark tale of solitude...