Hip radio man, Dr. Jazz, gives up a coast to coast late-night show when girlfriend, Nori, suggests that he meet her in Bangkok, Thailand. Travelling on a shoestring, they journey along what Dr. Jazz calls "the old dharma trail" — a backpacker’s network of cheap rooms and contacts throughout Asia. The Pillowbook of Doctor Jazz is autobiographical fiction in the tradition of Jack Kerouac: on the road in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia. Recalling the Japanese Pillowbook of Sei Shonogan, Dr. Jazz records the sights and sounds of his journeys, in the ironic voice of a traveller at end of day. From smoking opium in a remote mountain village in Thailand, to uncovering the essence of Zen in a Japanese garden, Trevor Carolan confronts both the Westerner’s mythical dream of Asia and the harsh reality awaiting the traveller. "Asia’s raw, androgynous otherness has beckoned to the West...," writes Carolan in his prologue, cautioning that, "As travellers quickly learn, Asia is a kick in the teeth."

Dr. Jazz and Nori’s adventures in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Nepal, Burma, and Japan are vividly written with a wry humour that touches on love, history, culture and custom, eroticism, drugs and politics. Originally published by Random House in Australia in 1999, Ekstasis is proud to release the first North American edition of this fresh novel about finding love and self through Asia’s "otherness."

Trevor Carolan is the author of Giving Up Poetry: With Allen Ginsberg At Hollyhock, a memoir of his acquaintance with the late poet, as well as books of poetry, including Celtic Highway, his most recent from Ekstasis Editions. Carolan is also the editor of Down in the Valley, an anthology of poetry from the Fraser Valley, and International Editor of the Pacific Rim Review of Books. He teaches writing at Douglas College and lives in Deep Cove, BC.