THE VILLAGE AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD is a memoir of linked essays about an artist's life in a remote village on an island in the South China Sea. No signs point there. Even the police can’t find it. A place with no cars, but water buffalo rush hours. A place where nothing seems to happen, yet which once might have been the capital of an empire. It was love maybe not at first sight, but by the second sight began a love affair that lasted for decades.