The Dalai Lama’s Smile: Stories

In eight short stories, travelers and locals become entangled in situations that send their moral compasses spinning.

A grieving American father visits Dharamsala to investigate the murder of the son he’s never understood and finds himself delving into the mystery of the young man’s life. A Turkish-Cypriot teacher is tasked with making an inventory of household goods in an occupied tourist resort the inhabitants have fled. A Greek sculptor whose marriage is failing covers for a student from the US who, instead of learning the art, engages in an affair. A Buddhist nun enlists the help of a Peace Corps worker to kill a suffering dog. A wannabe eco-activist in Kentucky writes confessional letters to Boyan Slat, the young CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. A woman in a Rajasthan tourist caravan bears helpless witness to a dire culture clash.

As Closson Buck’s characters encounter circumstances that challenge their understanding of themselves and the world around them, they are forced to negotiate fallout stemming from religious dogma, environmental crisis, and political violence. Ranging from fabulism to realism, the stories in The Dalai Lama’s Smile invite us to explore the perils and the possibilities that come from engaging the unknown.

Paula Closson Buck is the author of a novel, Summer on the Cold War Planet, as well as three books of poems, most recently You Cannot Shoot a Poem. Her short stories have appeared in Kenyon Review, Nimrod International, Ploughshares, Cincinnati Review, and Southern Review, and her fiction has been recognized with a prize from Nimrod’s Katherine Anne Porter Competition and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She also spent six months as a Fulbright Scholar in Nicosia, Cyprus, and has been involved in NGO work in India. She now divides her time between Pennsylvania and the Pelion region of Greece.