'The Novice: A Story of True Love'

The novel, as a storytelling device, begins with that white parchment of possibility, turns many tricks, reveals many truths and, in the best of hands, can exploit the very worst in humankind. Novels are fairly seditious undertakings. And that's why the very idea of a Zen novel sounds like either a comedy sketch or simply an improbable stretch.

And yet that's what Vietnamese Buddhist Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh has done with his first novel, "The Novice: A Story of True Love." Hanh, who is also a poet and the bestselling author of "Peace Is Every Step," was nominated by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967 for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to reconcile the peoples of North and South Vietnam.