Synopses & Reviews
Cees Nooteboom, hailed by A. S. Byatt as one of the greatest modern novelists, is one of Holland's most important authors. In Lost Paradise, Nooteboom's most ambitious book yet, he sets out to uncover the connections between two seemingly unrelated travelers. Alma, a young woman of German descent, leaves her parents' Sao Paolo home on a hot summer night. Her car engine dies in one of the city's most dangerous favelas, a mob surrounds her, and she is pulled from the automobile. Not long after, Dutch novelist Erik Zontag is in Perth, Australia, for a literary conference and finds a winged woman curled up in a closet in an empty house. The intersection of their paths illuminates the ways in which the divine touches our lives. With a beautiful stranger aboard a Berlin-bound flight and a haggard-looking man on a Holland train platform, Nooteboom builds a complex, haunting story of longing, regret, and rebirth in the dawn of the new millennium. Lost Paradise is an affirmation of our underlying humanity in an increasingly fragmented age, a deeply resonant tale of cosmically thwarted love.
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 feathersand then she speaks. The intersection of their paths illuminates the extraordinary coincidences that propel our lives.