'A torrent's course does not depend on the water; it is latent in the mountain's topography. What controls a man's destiny?' 'There is no virtue without vice, just as there is no gold without impurity. Therefore, when one acquires a virtue, does one not also acquire a vice too?' Such are the musings and reflections in The Landscape of a Mind. In this profoundly introspective collection of thoughts, gathered in journal entries and correspondence with friends, Tohon questions the essence of human nature, the obscure workings of the human mind and the heart, and mulls over the meaning of good and evil, the implications of the self and ego, and the concepts of free will and choice, destiny and fate. A considerable amount of ground to cover, but Tohon's personalised and conversational tone, as well as his use of an approach that is very much rooted in the Eastern philosophies, makes this piece an enjoyable exchange of thoughts, ideas and beliefs between humanists and philosophers on a very much global level.

Life's journey is complex and diverse. War is being continually waged on various fronts in different shapes and forms. First, there is a war against oneself - call it an inner drive or a journey hidden in the depths of one's own heart. And then there is the outer war in the visible world. The Jihadi unfolds as a chance meeting with an American professor in Jakarta lands a Bangladeshi youth in his dreamland: America. By the time the youth fi nishes his studies, he has formed a bond with the professor, his American host family and several others. But it is now time to leave the US and return to the East, where his perceptive mind begins to think deeply about human experience and the world around him. The Jihadi is a portrayal of a man's inner and outer worlds that takes the reader into powerfully real situations of the author's devising. The events that unfold along the young man's journey are something one has imagined, met or, at least, seen in passing; but this story brings the reality home. The author gives himself the space to develop the theme and fi nally confronts his own deep-seated, dark shadow. He traces life's passage from its root through the gruesome ordeals contributing to its violent nature and at the same time making him realise that all along he has been living in a world dominated by his long past. He concludes that an embryo in its mother's womb is not the beginning of a new life-it is the new beginning of an ancient life.