ISBN: 0-911906-28-2
Godina izdanja: 1985
Jezik: Engleski
Autor: Strani

HARRY BARBA

ROUND TRIP TO BYZANTIUM

Izdavač - Metroland-Ballston SPA, New York

Godina - 1985

374 strana

24 cm

ISBN - 0-911906-28-2

Povez - Tvrd

Stanje - Kao na slici, ima posvetu, tekst bez podvlačenja


`Revolution threatening the entire Middle East, international powers fear the triggering of World War III. Unidentified atomic submarines surface with a blockade from Beirut in the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf`s Straights of Hormuz. North, the Turkish mountains and the Soviet Caucasus impassable, the cradle lands of Ham and Shem are sealed in a quarantine ward. Isolation from the family of nations is complete. But for the frenetic coming and going of air traffic.

Precious metal transformed beyond the wildest dreams of ancient alchemists, the money and gold markets heat up. Local currencies thirst after American dollars in a money changer`s nightmare of accelerating activity. Only to pile up like ruptured-humped camels, splaylegged and google-eyed at the mirages of bonedry oases wells.

Within the grisly fence of steel, three Americans and their women are suspended in the blind eye of the fiscal sirocco at the clift of civil chaos.

Then an indiscreet Jihadabad housewife is thrown out into the streets turbulent with brutalized students-the vortex of the maelstrom explodes.

Professor John PaulieHart licking his multiple wounds in his tent, folk hero Baldazar Saintine (with his bevy of belly dancers) and Dr. Abkar Akbar, with a far-flung community of artists and educators, master-mind direct action that meets the situation head on. What happens is the first level of Round Trip To Byzantium`s story.

On another level, the world`s `Pauper Aristocracy` try to do business while at play in the marble halls of storied Beclan`s sumptuous casino. Courting flirtatious New Money of oil-rich sheiks and princes, pomp and circumstance unfolds intrigue amidst seductive pageantry.

Out of this mosaic of palpitant emotions and overextended spirits, a frieze of love and romance gradually takes shape. Multiple riddles buried within interminably interlocked boxes overwhelm the readers until they come to understand how it is and what it is in the world of Ali Baba, Sinbad, and Scheherazade that survives the upheavals of oil politics, the dervish dance of world-wide financial instability, and a trip over the Niagara of technology of the last decades of the 20th century.

Tears are overwhelmed with laughter again and again. In the wake of laughter, wisdom emerges with a promise of peace and sanity. Readers feel clean and walk tall again.

Round Trip To Byzantium is the capstone of that kind of fiction-adventure and romance prod problems into resolution, giving hope to all. As such, this novel is nothing if not a parable for our times and the future-for Asia Minor and the entire family of nations.

Sunday New York Times Bookreview editor, Nona Balakian evaluates Harry Barba as `a highly accomplished but insufficiently recognized writer. . . [whose] fiction . . . seeks reconciliation and acceptance of culture, ethnic differences. . . and oscillates between parable-like comedy and naturalistic socio-psychological understanding.` Balakian sums up critical acclaim of Barba`s work by putting it in perspective.

`Though a New Englander by birth and upbringing, Barba has the Southerner`s sense of the eccentric, the larger-than-life character who thrives on his individualism. His social criticism is subtly masked behind a gusty humor which he sometimes indulges in excess. But whether he is writing about the New England scene or the Middle East (which he also knows first hand), he keeps his stories moving from episode to episode with unfailing exuberance and aplomb. When his characters win out it is with a certain bravado, as if they know themselves to be superior to their environment.`

The publishers are proud to present Round Trip To Byzantium as Harry Barba`s most recent major work in crafting fiction that strives for a truth that is truer than factual truth-the truth of the heart, the mind, and the imagination singing and dancing as exciting art.`


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