Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

In "Plato's Dialogues", Phaedrus is an ordinary Athenian youth who loves philosophy. In this book, Phaedrus returns to the world. He used to be a student of philosophy and a teacher of rhetoric, but due to conflicts between philosophical ideas and cultural worldviews, he was finally hospitalized with a nervous breakdown. After being discharged from the hospital, he hoped to be freed from his narrow and restricted self, so he started a long journey on a motorcycle across the continental United States. After complex experiences and introspection along the way, he finally temporarily regained spiritual integrity and tranquility.

This process of returning to oneself is realized by constantly seeking "good quality", that is, meditation in Eastern philosophy, and interpreting it with the way of motorcycle maintenance. That's where the name "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" comes from.

At the same time, the book also criticizes the dichotomy or dualism in the Western world, such as relative consciousness such as humanities and technology, spirit and matter, mysticism and mechanism, art and industry, mind and machinery, East and West.

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Published after 121 rejections

Cumulative global sales of more than 10 million copies

Time Magazine selected "Ten Most Influential Books of the 20th Century"

Completely newly added proofreading version

Comes with a 60-page exquisite booklet

Precious materials such as photos, maps, letters, and notes are revealed for the first time

In 1928, Robert Persig was born in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA. At the age of 15, he entered the University of Minnesota, majoring in chemistry, and then studying philosophy, and then studying for a master's degree in communication at the school; he went to India's Bernares Indian University to study Eastern philosophy and served as a professor of rhetoric. In the process of pursuing the truth, he was troubled by the duality and dichotomy advocated by the West, so he has been trying to find a way to integrate the fragmented culture, and trying to establish his own "metaphysics of good quality". of quality)" theoretical framework. Constantly thinking about these questions made him tortured and bound for a long time. In 1961, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression, and was hospitalized several times. Since 1963, the hospital has performed electroconvulsive therapy on him as many as 28 times, during which time his wife divorced him. Later, he finally stopped clinging to his theories and was discharged from the hospital, and began to devote himself to writing to express his ideas.

In 1968, he and his eldest son Chris set out from the Twin Cities on a motorcycle to engage in spiritual adventures in the Midwestern wilderness, the Rocky Mountains and the West Coast. The reason why he started this long journey across the continental United States was to free himself from a narrow and restricted self. After complicated experiences and introspection along the way, he finally temporarily regained his spiritual integrity and purity. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is the posthumous work of this trip.

In 1974, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" was finally published after being rejected by 121 publishers, and immediately became a super bestseller, selling more than one million copies in one year, and has been in the top spot for more than ten years. bestseller list. It is listed as a must-read reference book for the course "Zen and Modern American Literature" in American universities, and was selected as one of the ten most influential books in the 20th century by Time Magazine. The author, Robert Pirsig, is also regarded as the Thoreau of the 1970s because of his publication.

Later, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" was introduced and published in dozens of countries around the world, and the cumulative sales volume has exceeded 10 million copies so far.

In 2006 and 2011, our agency published the simplified Chinese paperback and hardcover editions of this book, both of which received good response. In April 2017, the octogenarian Pirsig passed away, and "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" became his swan song.

In order to pay tribute to Mr. Pirsig, we spent a year preparing this set of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (Collector's Edition). The Collector's Edition adopts the binding method of a hardcover box set. In addition to re-editing and re-translating the original book, adding nearly 30,000 words of content, there is also a bonus booklet of nearly 60 pages, which contains new The drawn map of the journey, interviews with the author, letters, notes, and dozens of photos taken by the author himself during the journey, these photos are published for the first time in the world.