Lost Paradise: A Novel

By Cees Nooteboom

Book Overview

From "one of the greatest modern novelists" comes a haunting tale of angels, art, and modern love (A. S. Byatt).

In Lost Paradise, Cees 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' S o Paulo 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.

"Dreamy and self-conscious . . . Nooteboom] brazenly explores notions of reinvention, healing, loss, and the divine." --Tom Barbash, The New York Times Book Review

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802118550
• ISBN13: 9780802118554
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.8" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

`All kinds of things were sacred but nothing had been preserved in a book.'

The intersecting journeys of travellers and their reasons for travel, reflections on life, literature and cultural difference are some of the themes explored in this novel. What do Alma and Erik, whose first encounter is in Australia, have in common? From what are they each escaping, and what impact will their journeys and destinations have on their futures? `Angels do not exist and yet they are divided into orders much like the hierarchy in an army.' This compact, beautifully written novel demonstrates how it is possible to write effectively and economically while exploring complex themes. This is a book to treasure. It is also the first book of Mr Nooteboom's I have read and I will be looking for English translations of his other works. I recommend this novel highly. Jennifer Cameron-Smith