Lucky's Last Theory: A Novel

Join Lucky, a modern-day Marcel Proust, on his perilous journey through the Memoropolis to the City of Lights. On remembering and forgetting in the 21st century.

Meet Lucky Wellington, a middle-aged once-brilliant high-achiever now confined to an asylum of Kafkaesque players with little recall of the how, what, or why. Scorned by friends and family, he remains acutely observational, desperate to make sense of his unexplained abandonment.

Two nights ago Lucky's mind felt mired in sludge, slow to process but at least stable. Then he comforted Alois, an unknown and terrified seductress who implied their fates were entwined and they both faced imminent danger. They soon fell asleep and when Lucky awoke she was gone.

Lucky's head has begun throbbing, his back is sore, and one thing after another is going wrong. What does Alois know about him? Where did she come from and where did she go? He needs to find her yet nobody seems to know anything about her and he has no leads to fall back on?

As Lucky's search for Alois unfolds, he confronts hard questions on love and self-identity, as well as more modern concerns like the mind-scrambling effects of technology and the obscenity of forced institutionalization. Unable to put the lady out of his thoughts, he experiences a succession of absurdities and horrors, surprises and delights, each contributing a clue suggesting an extraordinary connection between her disappearance and his crumbling mind.

Offbeat but upbeat, the novel presents a reconstruction of Lucky's journals and audio-taped meditations that preserves his effusive voice. What emerges is a tale that straddles the hairline between comedy and tragedy, the story of a jinxed hero exploring what it means to be 'human' and and the fickle role of memory in that equation.