Born on the outskirts of Manchester, Northern England, in 1946, Geoff Olton attended St Peter’s College, Oxford, majoring in mathematics. After failing his final examinations, he spent a year teaching English to Saudi Arabian Air Force cadets before moving to Kobe, Japan, where he has since lived for 50 years, working in teaching, interpretation, and translation.
His writings include a 5,000-page analysis of the spoken English language in its relationship to Japanese and similarly grouped languages, and a novel, The Anemone Bowl, (both as yet to be published).
The tale of an afterlife. “If the inability to see other than that which you wish to see can be considered a kind of heaven, then presumably the inability to escape self-knowledge must be one version of hell.” The ill-fated consequences of happenstance: Born into an English country village com...
The Way We Are is an account of a life passed in England, Saudi Arabia, and 50+ years in post-war Japan. How a search for peace of mind became an attempt at self-realization – “satori” or enlightenment, and an acceptance of why we cannot be other than we are – involving (for no clear reaso...
