The mesmerizing story of a Latin American science fiction writer and the lives her lost manuscript unites in post-Katrina New Orleans
In 1929 in New Orleans, a Dominican immigrant named Adana Moreau writes a science fiction novel titled Lost City. It is a strange and beautiful novel, set in a near future where a sixteen-year-old Dominican girl, not all that unlike Adana herself, searches for a golden eternal city believed to exist somewhere on a parallel Earth. Lost City earns a modest but enthusiastic readership, and Adana begins a sequel. Then she falls gravely ill. Just before she dies, leaving behind her husband and son, she destroys the only copy of the manuscript.
Decades later in Chicago, Saul Drower’s dying grandfather asks him to send a mysterious package to Adana Moreau’s son, Maxwell, a theoretical physicist at the University of Chile. When the package is unexpectedly returned, Saul discovers that it contains a manuscript titled A Model Earth, written by none other than Adana Moreau.
Who was Adana Moreau? How did Saul’s grandfather, a Jewish immigrant born on a steamship to parents fleeing the aftershocks of the Russian Revolution, come across this lost unpublished manuscript? Where is Maxwell and why did Saul’s grandfather send him the manuscript as his final act in life? With the help of his friend Javier, Saul tracks down an address for Maxwell in New Orleans, which is caught at that moment in the grip of Hurricane Katrina. Unable to reach Maxwell, Saul and Javier head south through the heartland of America toward that storm-ravaged city in search of answers.
Weaving together history, philosophy, and metaphysics, and imbued with the lyrical signatures of Latin American literature, Michael Zapata’s debut shines a breathtaking new light on the experiences of displacement and exile that define our nation. The Lost Book of Adana Moreau is a brilliantly layered masterpiece that announces the arrival of a bold new literary talent.
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"[A] labyrinthine debut novel about story’s power to traverse time and space…An illuminating work on trauma and the transience of human existence…[and] a fascinating send up to science fiction.”
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Library Journal (starred review)