The legendary American writer, former beatnik, thinker, moralist, recluse, Zen Buddhist, Robert Maynard Pirsig now rarely appears in public and is reluctant to give interviews. Published in 1974, the novel "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" made its author, a former compiler of scientific and technical documentation, a true spiritual leader of an entire generation. This is an autobiography of a mind and body asking the damned questions of human existence, trying to establish a new system of life values. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a truly captivating novel whose philosophy reconciles technology and religion, the lotus and the wrench.