The Three Marks of Existence
FICTION | SHORT STORIES | BUDDHISM | Paperback – $16.95 | Publication Date: June 2025 | 978-1961864283 | Dimensions: 5.25 x 8 | 230 Pages
The Three Marks characterise all existence. Change, dissatisfaction and questions of identity lie at the core of this collection. Passarelli's fiction engages with these themes, not to mire but to free us from suffering. Each story, born of an obsession with a moment, nudges us toward the liminal space where literature and spirituality converge. Nothing is eternal, but the truths touched on in these pages will endure long beyond the reading of them.
Reviews
"Like a lattice of jewels, each reflecting some quality of all the others, these twenty-eight stories are riveting, dream-like, at times hallucinatory; each an utterly distinct psychosphere, yet all held together by a luminous through-line, the Three Marks of Existence. Passarelli is a master painter of scenes."
— Frank LaRue Owen (Inzan), author of The School of Soft-Attention and The Temple of Warm Harmony
"Widely international, Passarelli's stories roam from Guatemala to Greece, Myanmar to Mexico, yielding a vibrant cast of narco-bosses, Mormon mothers, kidnapped children, and Zen meditators, among others. Bones guide, tower blocks burn, women morph, bitter lepidopterists speak, and drifters return to their ancestral homes. Love flourishes and goes out, but in each story we are held by the original and humane voice of a vital new author."
— Andy Brown, author of The Midnight Mechanic and Grace Notes
"Passarelli's stories weave their way through the intimate details of diverse individual lives towards the essence of what it means to be human."
— Sam Meekings, author of Under Fishbone Clouds and The Book of Crows
About The Author
Cassandra Passarelli has run a bakery, managed a charity, subedited for several magazines, set up a children’s library in Guatemala, and taught yoga. She has a PhD in creative writing, from a Buddhist perspective, and held a short lectureship at Exeter University. She temporarily lives out of a backpack and eight banana boxes with prolonged stays in London and the Cyclades, and an eye on the Peloponnese. She has published stories with Paragon Press, Cinnamon Press, and Arachne Press as well as numerous US and UK literary journals including Cold Mountain Review, The Mechanics’ Institute Review, The Cost of Paper, Takahe, Adirondack Review, Ambit, Chicago Quarterly Review, and The Interpreter’s House.
