Tower of Dreams - Softcover

Nasir, Jamil

3.67

55 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553580892 ISBN 13: 9780553580891

Publisher: Spectra, 1999

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A man capable of crystallizing images of foreign lands in his mind and selling them, Blaine Ramsey receives the disturbing picture of a young Arab beauty in distress and discovers that it portends a tragedy of international proportions. Original.

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From the Author:

How I Dreamed "Tower of Dreams"
"Tower of Dreams" flowed from many compulsions. First, I had found portrayals of the Middle East in most science fiction to be the most astonishing malarkey. I wanted to write about its hot, jostling, ancient, human-intense feel, its blinding days and jasmine nights, its silent ruins baking in the stillness of orange groves.

Then there was Cairo, haunting and indescribable, from the cabaret boats plying a Nile lined by luxury hotels to the slum towns in the vast, dusty graveyards; from the hot, packed markets dinning with low-tech commerce to the tranquility of the ornate mosques; from the beautiful 5,000-year-old stone goddesses in the Egyptian Museum to a movie industry thriving on kitsch and a language so supple and passionate that even the gaudiest melodrama gives you chills.

Then there was Aida, an Egyptian movie goddess as beautiful and powerful as any of her sisters in the Egyptian Museum, an incredible being exiled by some odd chance to the backwater of Egypt's Third World film industry.

And there was my wondering, ignited always by the sun-blinded days under the muezzin's call from the mosque minarets, whether a spirit really does lean down over this world, guiding everything somehow mysteriously from within.

And finally, waking in the early dawn at my father's house in the eastern Jordan Valley, a nightingale singing in the still, water-cool air of the garden, I saw the image of the dream-woman climbing the garden wall, innocent and dignified and childish, like the desert incarnate, and all my pent-up streams of thought rushed together in sudden inspiration, and this book was the issue.

About the Author:

JAMIL NASIR was born in Chicago, Illinois, but spent much of his childhood in the Middle East, surviving two major wars and the local schools. He returned to the U.S. in 1970, and started college at age 14, studying hard science, philosophy, psychology, Chinese history, and many other things, finally graduating from the University of Michigan with a Bachelors of General Studies degree. He also attended the University of Michigan Law School. Between stints at school he hitchhiked extensively around North America, working as a carpenter, fruit picker, warehouseman, gardener, shop clerk, and paralegal, among others. He is the author of numerous short stories and five novels. His 1999 novel Tower of Dreams won the Special Citation of the Philip K. Dick Award for best science fiction paperback of the year, as well as (in translation) France's top science fiction award, the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. Mr. Nasir currently works on large regulatory and litigation cases at a Washington, D.C. law firm, and lives in a suburb of Washington with his two daughters. His hobbies are photography and rampant metaphysical speculation.

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