I Am Radar
A Novel
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4.2 • 25 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
“Big, beautiful, ambitious . . . It takes narrative magic to pull off such a loopy combination, and luckily, Reif Larsen has it to spare. His prose is addictive and enchanting.” —Los Angeles Times
The moment just before Radar Radmanovic is born, the hospital’s electricity fails. The delivery takes place in total darkness. Lights back on, everyone present sees a healthy baby boy—with jet-black skin—born to the stunned white parents. No one understands the uncanny electrical event or the unexpected skin color. “A childbirth is an explosion,” an ancient physician explains. “Some shrapnel is inevitable, isn’t it?”
A kaleidoscopic novel both heartbreaking and dazzling, Reif Larsen’s I Am Radar rapidly explodes outward from Radar’s strange birth. In World War II Norway, a cadre of imprisoned schoolteachers founds a radical secret society that will hover on the margins of history for decades to come, performing acts of radical art and experimental science in the midst of conflict zones from embattled Bosnia to Khmer Rouge Cambodia and the contemporary Congo. All of these stories are linked by Radar—now a gifted radio operator living in the New Jersey Meadowlands—who struggles with love, a set of hapless parents, and a terrible medical affliction that he has only just begun to comprehend.
Drawing on the furthest reaches of quantum physics, forgotten history, and mind-bending art, Larsen’s I Am Radar is a triumph of storytelling at its most primal, elegant, and epic: a breathtaking journey through humanity’s darkest hours, yet one that arrives at a place of shocking wonder and redemption.
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.
Customer Reviews
Forewarned is forearmed. Enjoy!
It's been over 20 years since I saw the movie "Se7en" but, I (think I) clearly remember a scene about 2/3 of the way through the film when Morgan Freeman's character says something to the effect of, "You know this isn't going to end well." Brad Pitt's character says it'll be fine as long as they catch the bad guy. I took that exchange as the film's warning shot. If you saw it you know what I mean. I got that same warning shot sensation reading "I Am Radar" when, about 3/4 of the way through a fictional critic reviewing a fictional book called the book-within-the-book's unclear ending "a curious failure of invention for a man whose only gift was an overactive imagination." I marched towards the end of the book forewarned, and, contrary to the reviews I read upon completion ... I don't think of this novel's loose ends as a curious failure, but, rather ... the point.
Unique
Sometimes this book could be a little hard to follow, sometimes I couldn't put it down...it flowed so well. Did not understand the ending.