I Am Radar
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
A kaleidoscopic, epic novel about a lovestruck radio operator who discovers a secret society…
In 1975, a black child is mysteriously born to white parents.
His name is Radar Radmanovic.
Radar grows up in suburban New Jersey, but his story rapidly becomes entangled with terrible events in Yugoslavia, Norway, Cambodia, the Congo, and beyond. Falling in with a secretive group of puppeteers and scientists who stage experimental performances in war zones around the world, he is soon forced to confront the true nature of his identity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The gripping story of Radar Radmanovic, born in Elizabeth, N.J., in 1975, begins with his coal-black skin which came as a total surprise to his white parents. The troubled couple take young Radar to northern Norway for an experimental electric-shock procedure that will alter his skin color. There, they meet a tight-knit group of secretive physicists/puppeteers who call themselves Kirkenesferda. They stage elaborate avant-garde puppet performances in the middle of war zones and recruit Radar's father an expert radio and TV engineer. With masterly prose, Larsen (The Selected Words of T.S. Spivet) tells the tragic history of how the puppeteers managed to create art while others around them suffered and died, everywhere from New Jersey to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The novel takes a Borgesian turn near the end, when Radar finds himself in Africa, helping Kirkenesferda produce its most ambitious performance yet. Larsen's many vivid imaginings include a spellbinding narrative of a family torn apart by the Bosnian war (complete with photos and drawings), the history of a Cambodian rubber plantation, and a treacherous journey across the Atlantic in a container ship. This is a sprawling, engrossing novel about the ravages of war and the triumph of art. Larsen is an effortless magician, and his performance here is a pure delight.
