Paradise by Paradise - Hardcover

Burman, Howard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0595872492 ISBN 13: 9780595872497

Publisher: iUniverse, 2007

Synopsis

A novel about the disappearance of an enigmatic poet/prodigy, Roland Paradise, as told through the words of Paradise and the testimony of those who knew him and those he knew.

In a nonlinear structure, it unravels the story of Paradise from boy genius to watchmaker, to wartime codebreaker, to writer, to teacher, to hermetic genius. Roland Paradise the father, the son, the prodigy, the epicist, the enigmatist. The rumors, the stories, the accusations. Where is he? Is he? Was he ever.?

His mind was a cryptish place, an enigma, a harmless cipher machine knocked senseless by the insane attempts of others to decode it as though it held an inherent truth while driving him to another time, to anytime.

Roland Paradise was ultimately a sad and lonely figure, a possibly delusional reclusive intellectual for whom life held little joy. For all his brilliance, he never learned life's simplest lessons. A compulsive fabulist whose life and disappearance was more fantastic than any of the stories he invented or the lies he couldn't help telling.

About this title

About the Author

HOWARD BURMAN has more than twenty full-length plays to his credit. Two novels, A Man Called Shoeless, and Willie, Mickey, & The Duke have been published by Publish America. He earned a Ph.D. in dramatic literature from The Ohio State University and is a Fulbright Scholar. He lives in Felton, California and St. Gallen, Switzerland.

Review

"...Burman writes in an intricate, playful prose that brings his protagonist to life in all his lyric, bookish whimsy. With it's postmodern flourishes and seemingly endless allusions to literary history, the author manages to evoke the imaginative classics of Flann O'Brien, Anthony Burgess, and David Markson." "...readers won't close the book unsatisfied. It ultimately serves as a striking elegy for 20th-century literature and the bygone world in which it greatly mattered. A truly enjoyable comic tale with an emotional core."

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0595872492
• ISBN 13: 9780595872497
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 308