Who loves a stranger - Manu Bazzano

"A lucid post-metaphysical meditation. Bazzano skilfully weaves together disparate strands of thought from Europe and Asia, which converge in an unconditional embrace of the secular, the immediate and, above all, the other."
-Stephen Batchelor, author, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

"Manu Bazzano takes us on a fascinating journey through philosophy, religion, psychotherapy, and politics which challenges us to recognise - and welcome - the stranger, both in others and in ourselves. This beautifully written and poetic book exemplifies the very relationship that is called for, and confronts us directly with many of the comforting strategies we use to avoid encountering otherness. This is a timely call to a radical ethics which could transform the ways in which we relate: from the interpersonal realms of the romantic relationship or the therapeutic encounter, to the global arenas of war and migration."
-Dr Meg Barker, Open University

"This book is challenging, witty, and erudite. The range of topics and authors is both admirable and enviable as is the writer's facility in weaving together unexpected associations that provoke new mental reverberations. I greatly admire the book."
-Prof. Ernesto Spinelli, author, Practising Existential Psychotherapy

"Manu Bazzano invites you to leave the home of habitual understanding (including the ivory tower of mainstream philosophy) and enjoy the wide, open landscape. En route you will meet Ulysses and Abraham; at times you'll walk with Lvinas and Nietzsche, Agamben, Lefebvre and Merleau-Ponty. At the end of your journey you will notice that you are back at home meeting yourself - both as a stranger and as an intimate friend. You will also notice that you have found yourself - by unfolding the hospitality of your own Buddha-nature."
-Jrgen Kriz, University of Osnabrck

"In this provocative and learned book, Manu Bazzano shows himself to be a bold adventurer of ideas. Bringing together the central insight of Buddhism, the insubstantial nature of the self, and the exploration of 'otherness' which has preoccupied European philosophy over the last century, the author offers an exciting exploration through a rich banquet of ideas drawn from Western philosophy, classical mythology, psychotherapy theory and Zen Buddhism. At once erudite and very readable, his poetic style carries the reader through landscapes of thought which are both colourful and thought provoking. His message is visionary, but yet advocates an approach grounded in the detailed fabric of ordinariness. His writing embodies the paradoxes which he explores, inviting true encounter with the other and the stranger as the route to the personal, the social, the spiritual and the ethical."
-Caroline Brazier, author, Buddhist Psychology

"I found this book a delight and a constructive irritation. Suggesting a path beyond alienation that debunks our social pretensions, it is full of sparkling original and provocative ideas which come at one in a torrent. You will find a multiplicity of new angles and glittering images, illuminating what might otherwise remain abstruse, and cross fertilizing what one might never have brought together. I found many charming turns of phrase that said things I have been trying to say for years and some, equally well phrased, that challenged my foundations. This is a book that seeks to provoke solipsism and to challenge us to go beyond the will, inprisoned by the ego as it is, into the free fall of that space that is the nurturer of our dreams and in which we are, all at once, both host and exile."
-David Brazier, author, Zen Therapy