Readers Reviews Distance & Desire
“An engaging book from start to finish. A mysterious disappearance silently weaves through the relationships between diverse New Yorker and Chinese characters. I was drawn into these dynamic relationships made richer by the nuanced presentation of the cultural context that each character lived in. I was struck by the consequences transactional as opposed to genuine intimacy has on people’s lives.”
—Tor Theunissen
"Distance and Desire is a remarkable insight into the evocative and daring bonds between intimacy, love and culture.
Imants Kins has created an honest and vivacious exploration between two cultures connected through intimacy and the human spirit.
Distance and Desire will leave you ruminating over the profound complexities of human connection".
— Indigo Groenewold
Press
PRESS RELEASE
Distance and Desire
the new novel from IMANTS KINS
Published by Emergence Education Press, March 2023. ISBN-10: 1954642126ISBN-13: 978- 1954642126
Available through Amazon.com
“A story that shows how human intimacy transcends cultural difference.”
Philadelphia, PA, August 28th 2022 — Today’s media tends to present America and China as utterly incompatible cultures, but this new novel by Imants Kins shows how human intimacy is the bridge that can unite people across cultural divides by transcending stereotypes and historical animosities.
It’s 2013 and China is a world super power. The life of middle-aged businessman New Yorker Jimmy Baker looks great. While happily married to Hillary, an art gallery director, he harbours a long-kept secret. An unexpected business trip to secure ancient landscape paintings in Beijing changes all that. A series of events is unleashed that he could never have imagined. Back in New York paper planes pursue him and he overhears a conversation between Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol in the St. Vincent Ferrer church.
The story revolves around the lives of four New Yorkers and three Chinese. As the path of human intimacy weaves between them the story’s narrative brings to life a relationship between Jimmy and a young Chinese woman named Ai Song. The two meet for five days in Beijing during the sale of ancient Chinese landscape paintings and the relationship evolves over the next seventy seven days.
Cultural differences quickly fall away as the power of human Intimacy brings Jimmy and Ai into contact with their own humanity and each other’s. They connect profoundly by learning to understand the places they come from. For Jimmy this means New York, the ‘City of Possibility’, and for Ai, it’s the mountains of Chengdu, the soul of China. Both locations become living characters in the story and as the relationship between Jimmy and Ai deepens, they experience a sense of wholeness that is free from existential angst.
While Jimmy rejoices in New York’s jazz music and the ideal of the American dream, Ai treasures the landscapes, ancient beliefs and living history of China. The intimacy between Jimmy and Ai reveals how the cultures of China and America, although different, are compatible and in many ways complimentary.
Imants Gustavs Kins is an economist and futurist with extensive business experience in China, Japan and New York City. He holds dual Australian and Latvian citizenship. Having previously written poems, and short reflections on his times kayaking on the Swan River, it has always been his ambition to write a novel that shines a perceptive light on the nature of relationships between cultures. He is particularly interested in the relationship between America and China.
For more information or to request a copy of the book, please contact Imants Kins at imants@tewal.com.au
