These books by me (David G. Lanoue) form a quintet of “haiku novels”: five connected stories written in haiku-peppered prose about "mad, moonstruck poets" in Old Japan and modern New Orleans. You can start anywhere, but I would recommend reading them in their order of publication.
Haiku Guy → Laughing Buddha → Haiku Wars → Frog Poet → Dewdrop World
Since the last book is in many ways a prequel for the first book, the quintet forms a sort of circle. Round and round it goes!
Order hard copies from Red Moon Press or, in the case of Dewdrop World, Amazon.com. Order e-books for Kindle or Nook. While I'm happy to offer these books electronically, thus saving trees, wise collectors will want to snatch up the rare hard copies while they are still available. Laughing Buddha, unfortunately, is already out of print.
Read more about Haiku Guy, Laughing Buddha, Haiku Wars, Frog Poet, and Dewdrop World—and my definition of a haiku novel.
The Haiku of Kobayashi Issa website is by far my most ambitious work of translation: a searchable archive of ten thousand haiku by Issa with commentary.
Some of my novels have been translated to languages other than English. Haiku Guy is available in French, Spanish, Japanese, German, Bulgarian and Serbian. Other books that live in Bulgarian include Laughing Buddha, Haiku Wars and Frog Poet. Oddly, my "haiku novel" that is closest to a memoir, Nowever, has been published in Bulgarian, not (yet) in English.
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