Lost Paradise: A Novel [Hardcover]

Cees Nooteboom (Author), Susan Massotty (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2007

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: a beautiful stranger aboard a Berlin-bound flight and a haggard-looking man on a Holland train platform. With his fleeting impressions of these encounters, Nooteboom builds a complex, haunting story of longing, regret, and rebirth in the dawn of the new millennium. 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. Lost Paradise is an affirmation of our underlying humanity in an increasingly fragmented age, a deeply resonant tale of cosmically thwarted love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Eminent Dutch novelist Nooteboom (All Soul's Day) weaves an imaginative tale of redemption from the intersecting lives of travelers. After surviving a gang rape in São Paulo, a young, affluent Brazilian woman, Alma, takes off for Australia with her best friend, Almut: the two plan to train as masseuses. Nooteboom then cuts to an embittered middle-aged critic, Erik Zondag, who is cast out of his home in Amsterdam by his fed-up younger girlfriend and sent to an Alpine spa in order to dry out and become a different man. The first part of the novel tracks the two Brazilians as they travel though Australia with hope of stopping at the legendary Aboriginal Sickness Dreaming Place. Their Australian adventures take a turn involving the Angel Project, a multisite piece of participatory art in Perth. For the second part, Eric endures a punishingly ascetic stay at the Alpine spa, where he recognizes his masseuse. Framed by masterful reflections on misunderstandings in life and literature, Nooteboom's short work, at once delicate and chiseled, achieves a dreamlike suspension of time and place. (Oct.)
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From Booklist

"The world is a never-ending cross reference," claims one of Nooteboom's narrators in a previous work. Here, a chance encounter between a melancholic young Brazilian woman, Alma, and a rut-stuck middle-aged Dutch literary critic, Erik, in Perth, Australia, provides the ibid for an exploration of longing for spirituality and connection. Alma, obsessed with angels, has come to Australia to "exorcise a demon" (she was gang-raped in a São Paulo favela); Erik has been lured by a free ticket to a literary conference. Both thoughtful and playful, this metafiction sometimes feels more like an essay than a novel, even spelling out the conclusion. But while Nooteboom's observations about those who want to make themselves whole by borrowing wisdom from other cultures are canny, some readers may wish he'd explore another issue, too: Alma is raped by a "black cloud" (after finding the favela's danger "irresistible") and then seeks solace in the arms of an inscrutable Aborigine—yet the significance of an earthy longing for the Other is ignored in favor of sublime desires. Fans of J. M. Coetzee should try Nooteboom, a major writer in Holland. Graff, Keir

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; First Edition (UK) edition (October 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802118550
• ISBN-13: 978-0802118554
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #187,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars `All kinds of things were sacred but nothing had been preserved in a book.', March 28, 2008

By 

J. Cameron-Smith "Expect the Unexpected" (ACT, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost Paradise: A Novel (Hardcover)

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