Yet it is the unknown Bodisattvas who affect Tim most deeply: individuals who practice compassion in the midst of Asia's most wretched poverty and strife, such as Torquil, a poor Bangladeshi social worker struggling to set up a self help group for destitute women, who invites Tim to visit him in his village home.

The Great Dragon's Fleas is sure to appeal to anyone interested mysticism, faith, occult powers, enlightenment, and the ancient cultures of a vast and mysterious continent.