'J.' - E-book - ePub

Tim Kruger is an art collector and son of deceased architectural giant Maxwell Kruger.  Throughout his life, he has travelled and explored the world, purchasing and displaying rare and expensive artworks.  Yet lately, nothing seems to interest him, and he begins to see his life as repetitive and looping once again - so he takes the advice of those around him and travels, this time to France to reconnect with his lover, Josephine, who is beginning her new career as a photographer. During his stay, Josephine tells Tim about an auction that is taking place nearby at the house of a deceased art and ceramics collector.  Attending the auction out of curiosity, he purchases one of the sealed trunks that are available, hoping to score artworks lying inside.  When opened, it instead reveals old books filled with handwritten entries by a man named Marc Kingman who is living in a guesthouse in India - the story seeming to shift when he encounters another travelling guest, naming himself only: 'J.'. The story becomes blurred after Marc's enforced dependency on opium renders him unable to follow 'J.' on his next journey.  From here, the story becomes unfinished, with a dead-end at nearly every turn.  Deciding instead to investigate and complete the story himself, seeing it as his next exhibition, Tim plunges himself into 'J.'s hidden world - eventually leading him to his last known location where he follows in his footsteps, experimenting with everything from intensive fasting, seemingly endless periods of meditation and the use of hallucinogenic eyedrops, all to discover a man who never wanted to be understood.