	Login Cart Advanced Search
Our List Bestsellers Current Bestsellers All-Time Bestsellers Activism General Economic Justice Environmental Justice Education Reform Racial Justice Community Action Immigration Reform American Society General Anthropology Cultural Studies Economics Law and Society Media and Technology Philosophy Sociology Sports and Society Child and Family Issues Biography and Memoir Autobiography and Memoir Biography Disability Education Higher Education History of Education Race and Education School Reform and Policy Teaching and the Classroom Environment and Conservation Energy and Climate Conservation Food and Agriculture Wildlife Nature and Environment Feminism and Gender Biography and Memoir Feminism Gender and Sexuality Women's History Women's Literature Women's Lives History American History General World History Literature and the Arts Fiction Poetry Music The Arts Politics and Current Events Queer Perspectives Education and Youth Fiction General Memoir Religion and Sexuality Transgender Perspectives Race and Ethnicity in America Religion How We Live Our Beliefs Pluralism Buddhism Christianity Islam Judaism Unitarian Universalism World Religions Gender and Sexuality Inspiration Science and Medicine Public Health Medicine Science Psychology Women's Health YA and Children's Series Beacon Classics Celebrating Black Women Writers King Legacy Myths Made in America National Poetry Series Queer Action Queer Ideas Raised Voices Poetry Series ReVisioning History Forthcoming Summer 2025 Fall 2025 Blog About About Beacon Awards Booksellers and Librarians Staff Distribution Sales and Ordering Submission Guidelines Contact Customer Service Author Appearances Jobs and Internships Media Requests Desk and Exam Copy Information Rights and Permissions Resources Book Banning Resources Resources for Times of Fascists Reading Guides Teacher Guides Guides for UUs and Book Groups Social Impact

The Saint of Kathmandu

and Other Tales of the Sacred in Distant Lands

Author: Sarah LeVine

The beauty and complexity of religious beliefs as they are lived out around the world, from a superb scholar and storyteller

“You should come with us to Lumbini, Lord Buddha’s birthplace,” said the Saint of

Kathmandu as she swept by me after evening devotions in the nunnery. Pausing at the bottom of the stairway to her quarters, she turned and, bright black eyes locking with mine, added, “Will we meet tomorrow? The buses leave at six“-an order, not an invitation, I realized, and so, putting my life on hold, the next morning [I joined the pilgrimage].

Sarah LeVine began doing research in Africa in 1969 as a young woman and sometime Anglican newly married to an anthropologist and provisionally, at least, to a rationalist view of religion. Over the next several decades, as she continued her research in cultures as various as Muslim Nigeria, Catholic Mexico, Buddhist Nepal, Hindu India, and New Age America, she honed a keenly observant eye. During this time she also raised two children, learned and forgot many languages, wrote highly praised novels (under the pen name Louisa Dawkins), and began to understand that religious faith has little to do with doctrine or philosophical abstractions.

These deftly crafted accounts plunge us into the lives of some of the people LeVine became close to on four continents. In a northern Nigerian town we find orthodox Muslims trying- and failing- to ignore the thriving spirit possession cult in their midst. In a Mexican city women struggling with their husbands’ infidelity and the loss of children and take the Virgin Mary as their role model. In the face of tragedy in a Kenyan village, tensions flare between traditionalists who live in dread of ancestral wrath and witchcraft and Christians who reject such beliefs. In affluent Hong Kong a Filipina maid, enduring a long separation from her son, turns for support to a charismatic Catholic church; and in Nepal, LeVine accompanies the remarkable Saint of Kathmandu, who fled an arranged marriage and earned renown as a Buddhist nun and feminist leader, on a pilgrimage to holy places all across north India.

These lives led LeVine to think of religion as inseparable from cultural complexity and constraints, and to view less critically her own lingering attachment to what she calls The Life of Christ (The Movie). As engrossing and surprising as any novel, The Saint of Kathmandu is a richly textured and unsentimental depiction of the role of religion in lives all over the world.

“In this remarkable book Sarah LeVine brings us into religious lives and cultural worlds portrayed with an immediacy, complexity, and intimacy so very different from ‘textbook religion.’ With her we enter into those borderlands of real encounter where we meet people who do not share our lived world and who ask us questions as penetrating and illumining as any we might ask of them.” —Diana Eck, author of A New Religious America and Encountering God

“Sarah LeVine’s The Saint of Kathmandu is a reader’s delight. The author’s fine gifts as a novelist combine here with her long experience as an ethnographer. The result is a lovely confluence of stories—each one vivid in detail, elegant in structure, beautiful in prose expression, and brimful of human understanding.” —John Demos, author of The Enemy Within: Two Thousand Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World and The Unredeemed Captive

“This is a major work, the beginning of ongoing discussions about the role and impact of religion in multiple societies around the world. It fascinates and prods and disturbs and enlightens. Best of all, the book reads like a novel without losing a scintilla of academic credibility. My best advice: whatever you were going to read next, forget it. Read this book instead.” —Joan Chittister, author of Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir

“The Saint of Kathmandu is rich, intense, utterly credible. The tales are deeply engaging, and reveal more about workaday religion that any standard approaches—perhaps because the author takes on individual dramas of suffering, enduring, growing. This is also the most global small book I can think of. Save for Nepal, I have traveled in or looked into religion in all six country-contexts which Sarah LeVine treats, American Zen not least. She is compellingly concrete; she evokes humility without rue; she emits wisdom without pride. An extraordinary feat of religious story telling.” —Theodore Friend, author of Indonesian Destinies

Reviews

Review: ForeWord Magazine - November 1, 2008

"What Sarah LeVine found as she traveled the world researching and becoming close to the people of four continents is that in facing the full range of human emotions, orthodoxy in belief and practice may not be a match for people's traditions in bringing them hope and comfort."

Review: Weekly Buddhism - October 25, 2008

"An interesting book with an interesting perspective. There are things here both positive and negative about all these various groups and religions . . . It's a good read, and it's fun to visit the unusual cultures and share the odd experiences the author relates with us here."

Review by: Yasmin Nair, Windy City Times - August 1, 2008

"A compelling book, and it's compassionate without condescension."

Review: Publisher's Weekly - June 18, 2008

"With her 'observing eye' and boundless curiosity, LeVine describes how witchcraft, Buddhism, spirit possession, charismatic Christianity and the Virgin Mary help people make sense of their lives and endure the hardships they encounter. Vivid descriptions and symapthetic portraits are this book's strengths."

The Saint of Kathmandu

and Other Tales of the Sacred in Distant Lands

Reviews

Goodreads reviews

You might also be interested in: