Lost Paradise - Softcover

Nooteboom, Cees

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802143881 ISBN 13: 9780802143884

Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008

Synopsis

In Lost Paradise, Nooteboom sets out to connect two seemingly unrelated strangers whom he has glimpsed on his travels, and to explore the major impact that small interactions can have on the course of our journeys. A beautiful woman aboard a Berlin-bound flight becomes Alma, a young lady who leaves her parents' Sao Paolo home on a hot summer night in a fit of depression. Her car engine dies in one of the city's most dangerous favelas, a mob surrounds her, and she is pulled from the automobile. To escape her memory of the assault, she flees across the world, to Australia, where she becomes involved in the beautiful but bizarre Angel Project. Not long after, Dutch literary critic Erik Zontag is in Perth, Australia, for a conference. He has found a winged woman curled up in a closet in an empty house. He reaches out, and for a second allows his fingertips to brush her feathers--and then she speaks. The intersection of their paths illuminates the extraordinary coincidences that propel our lives.

About this title

Review:

"Recalls, in tone, Vladimir Nabokov ... delicately allusive and rich, even ripely comic."

"Nooteboom's short novels--dreamy, fable-like, self-reflective--should appeal to anyone who likes, say, Italo Calvino or Paul Auster..... One could hardly ask for a more intelligent evening's entertainment."

Book Description:

A wonderfully charming and mystical fable about angels, Australia and love.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0802143881
• ISBN 13: 9780802143884
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160