A novel about the disappearance of an enigmatic poet/prodigy, Roland Paradise, as told through the words of Paradise and the testimony of those who knew him and those he knew.
In a nonlinear structure, it unravels the story of Paradise from boy genius to watchmaker, to wartime codebreaker, to writer, to teacher, to hermetic genius. Roland Paradise the father, the son, the prodigy, the epicist, the enigmatist. The rumors, the stories, the accusations. Where is he? Is he? Was he ever.?
His mind was a cryptish place, an enigma, a harmless cipher machine knocked senseless by the insane attempts of others to decode it as though it held an inherent truth while driving him to another time, to anytime.
Roland Paradise was ultimately a sad and lonely figure, a possibly delusional reclusive intellectual for whom life held little joy. For all his brilliance, he never learned life's simplest lessons. A compulsive fabulist whose life and disappearance was more fantastic than any of the stories he invented or the lies he couldn't help telling.