The Bone Man of Benares

by Terry Tarnoff

In 1971, Terry Tarnoff packed a bag, a guitar and sixteen harmonicas and headed out on an eight year journey that would take him into the jungles of Africa, the mountains of India and beyond. This account of his revelatory journey is a tumultuous love story, a spiritual odyssey, and a rollicking escapade all rolled up into one. Tarnoff is a fevered, risk-taking writer with an uncanny ability to render place. The Bone Man of Benares is a lunatic bird of a book, flapping, singing, soaring, often all at the same time. It’s a wild-hearted celebration of cross-cultural discovery, a laugh-out-loud, delirious adventure that traverses the chasm of time, speaking to readers young and old about the universal need for connection.

“The Bone Man of Benares calls to the reader like a train-whistle moaning in the distance. Read this book for the literary rock and roll ride of your life.” –Phil Cousineau, author of The Art of Pilgrimage

“I laughed (rollicked) my way through. Terry Tarnoff is one of the funniest writers I’ve ever read, maybe because so much serious depth underlies the humor.”  –Gerald Nicosia, author of Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac

“The Bone Man of Benares is the kind of sweeping, atmospheric epic they just don’t make any more. Terry Tarnoff renders this engaging young-man-on-the-road saga with the heightened élan of a Bangi-abusing Paul Theroux or hippied-out E. M. Forster. In the grand tradition, The Bone Man of Benares stands out as the best kind of contempo literary globe-trotting. It does what a great novel should do – leave you feeling like you’ve been there.” –Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight