Robert Sheppard Literary Blog & World Literature Forum

Introducing Spiritus Mundi, a Novel by Robert Sheppard

Author’s E-mail:   rsheppard99_2000@yahoo.com

Related Links and Websites:  Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard

For Introduction and Overview of the Novel:  http://spiritusmundinovel.wordpress.com/

For Author’s Blog:  https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/

To Read a Sample Chapter from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundisamplechapters.wordpress.com/

To Read Fantasy, Myth and Magical Realism Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundifantasymythandmagicalrealism.wordpress.com/

To Read Sexual Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: The Varieties of Sexul Experience:  https://spiritusmundivarietiesofsexualexperience.wordpress.com/

To Read Spy, Espionage and Counter-terrorism Thriller Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi:   http://spiritusmundispyespionagecounterterrorism.wordpress.com/

To Read Geopolitical and World War Three Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundigeopoliticalworldwar3.wordpress.com/

To Read Spiritual and Religious Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundionspiritualityandreligion.wordpress.com/

To Read about the Global Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly in Spiritus Mundi:  https://spiritusmundiunitednationsparliamentaryassembly.wordpress.com/

To Read Poetry from Spiritus Mundi：https://spiritusmundipoetry.wordpress.com/

For Discussions on World Literature and Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi:   http://worldliteratureandliterarycriticism.wordpress.com/

For Discussions of World History and World Civilization in Spiritus Mundi:  https://worldhistoryandcivilizationspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Eva Strong from Spiritus  Mundi: https://evasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Andreas Sarkozy from Spiritus Mundi: http://andreasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Robert Sartorius from Spiritus Mundi: http://sartoriusblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

With the movie rights to the novel, Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard under negotiation many readers have written in to express their preferences for who should be cast in the roles of the principal characters. This Blog summarizes the results to date, listing the actors and actress suggested or nominated for each character in Spiritus Mundi, listed in order of those who received the most votes to date. Please write in and nominate an actor or actress or vote for those already nominated! Descriptions of the characters may be found in the “Index of Principal Characters of Spiritus Mundi” found on this Blog or the companion Blogsites such as http://spiritusmundinovel.wordpress.com/

NOMINATIONS AND RANKINGS TO DATE FOR NOMINATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR CASTING OF ROLES IN SPIRITUS MUNDI, THE MOVIE:

For the Role of Robert Sartorius:

1. Harrison Ford

2. Russel Crowe

3. Brad Pitt

4. Jeremy Irons

5. Nicolas Cage

5. (Your Nomination)

For the Role of Eva Strong:

1. Emma Thompson

2. Angelina Jolie

3. Kate Winslet

4 (Your Nomination)

For the Role of Andreas Sarkozy:

1. Leonardo di Caprio

2. Sean Penn

3. Daniel Day Lewis

4. (Your Nomination)

For the Role of President Barret Osama:

1. Morgan Freeman

2. Denzel Washington

3. (Your Nomination)

For the Role of Isis:

1. Madonna

2. Lady Gaga

3. (Your Nomination)

For the Role of Osiris:

1. Johnny Depp

2. Sean Penn

3. (Your Nomination)

For the Role of Etienne Dearlove:

1. Sean Penn

2. Jeremy Irons

3. (Your Nomination)

For the Role of the Magister Ludi:

1. Ian McKellan

2. Michael Gambon

3. (Your Nomination)

For the Role of Mohammad ala Rushdie:

1.  Khaled Nabawy

2. Mido Hamada

3. (Your Nomination)

For the Role of Pari Kasiwar:

1. Abhishek Bachchan

2. Rajinkanth

2.

3.

For the Role of Yoriko Oe:

1. Zhang Zi Yi

2. Kelly Hu

3. Lucy Liu

4. Zhou Xun

5. Tang Wei

2. (Your Nomination)

For the Role of Zhou Yu Chun:

1. Gong Li

2. Zhang Zi Yi

3. Joan Chen

4. (Your Nomination)

For the Role of Jennie Zheng:

1. Kelly Hu

2. Lucy Liu

3. Zhou Xun

4. Tang Wei

About the Supporting Characters:

Günter Gross,  German winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, is Sartorius’ longtime friend  with whom he collaborates in both his support for the Parliamentary Assembly campaign and in researching and writing a book on the rise of World Literature, building on Goethe’s idea of “Weltliteratur.”

Jack Sartorius, estranged son of Robert Sartorius who grows up far from his father in the custody of his recently deceased mother following his parents’ contested divorce. He becomes a CIA agent assigned to counter-terrorism duties under the cover name of Jack McKinsey, and is assigned to work with the campaign and investigate its infiltration by terrorist cells. As a cover for his CIA activities he is employed as a top executive of Jung Communications, an international Public Relations, Media and Government Relations agency, at which he manages the account for the campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. Jack echoes the character Telemachus in the Odyssey. In Book Two Jack takes a central role as organizer of the Jerusalem telethon for the UNPA and as a CIA agent where he encounters Khlorindah and Tancredi.  He is captured with his father by the terrorists led by Mustafa and taken captive to Iran, where escaping, he becomes one of the Argonauts on a cosmic quest to save humanity from destruction by retrieving the Missing Seed Crystal, the Silmaril from the Immortals.

Etienne Dearlove, a British MI6 agent under cover as a Reuters/BBC journalist who organizes the “Nightingale” espionage project in Beijing which uses a planted computer Ghost Program to transmit records of secret Chinese Politburo meetings to British intelligence. Though having a wife and child in London, he is the lover of Yoriko Oe and in pursuit of his espionage ends involves her in a ménage-a-trois with Zhou Yuchun, office manager to Chinese Politburo member Minister Luo Chunwang. In Book Two, Etienne experiences the geopolitical cataclysm which leads to an incipient WWIII and the expansion of NATO to include Russia and Japan, and become the new “C,” or head of MI6 British Intelligence.

Yoriko Oe,             is the Japanese East Asia coordinator for the Committee and daughter of a high executive of Toshiba. To escape her parents insistence on a traditional Japanese marriage she moves to Beijing in pursuit of her lover Etienne Dearlove and becomes involved in a bi-sexual ménage-a-trois with Etienne Dearlove and Zhou Yuchun. She also has a brief sexual fling with Andreas Sarkozy.

Zhou Yuchun, is the office manager for Chinese Politburo member Minister Luo Chunwang. In her study abroad in Tokyo she becomes primarily lesbian, though bisexual, which she conceals from her bosses. She falls in love with Yoriko Oe and has a lesbian cum ménage-a-trois affair with her and Etienne. It is through her that Etienne Dearlove as a British MI6 agent is able to install an espionage Ghost Program on her computers to transmit the records of the Chinese Politburo to British intelligence. At the end of Book Two, imbued with the Japanese bushido culture from her overseas studies, she commits ritual suicide on the collapse of her world.

Mohammad Ala Rushdie,  is an Egyptian former Cambridge student who with Mustafa heads the Mid-East section of the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly Committee. He becomes a mystic, novice and dervish in a Sufi order operating a Meditation Centre in London, all while under the surveillance of British MI5 as a falsely suspected terrorist. In Book II he is taken hostage with Sartorius in Jerusalem and held as a human shield in Iran’s underground nuclear processing facilities outside Qom and then goes on to participate in the epic Quest for the Missing Seed Crystal, the Silmaril in the Crystal Bead Game to save humanity. He is also a writer and while in captivity is invited to read his story “The Parable of the Supreme Leader and the Three Messiahs” to Iran’s Supreme Leader, which contributes to the Supreme Leader’s change of heart and abandonment of the Triple Axis Conspiracy with Russia and China to seize the Middle-Eastern oil deposits in Saudi Arabia. At the end of Book Two following the nuclear catastrophe in Jerusalem and his Sufi calling, he joins Mother Isis and the Global Progressive Spiritual Alliance in their quest for nurturing a global spiritual rebirth.

Mustafa bin Salaman al Khalifa, is the son of a wealthy Bahraini family and former fellow student of Mohammad at Cambridge. While ostensibly managing his family’s investments in London and serving as the co-chief of the Parliamentary Assembly Campaign Committee, Mustafa is in reality an agent of the Iranian Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards and the prime operative in executing the secret conspiracy of the reactionary factions of China, Russia and Iran to join forces in a new Axis to mount a surprise attack on the Middle-East oil reserves in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Gulf. He is the primary organizer of the conspiracy to conceal an atomic bomb in a Chinese Teracotta Warrior which is detonated in Jerusalem along with the taking of celebrity hostages which provides the cover for a joint Chinese/Russian/Iranian attempt to seize the oil fields of the Middle East, precipitating an impending WWIII. At the end of Book II it is revealed that Mustafa is in fact a time-travelling fugitive from justice in the 23^rd Century who flees into the past after a failed attempt to overthrow the democratic world government of the Republic of the United States of Earth, founded on the successful beginnings of the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly.

Julian Jung, founder of international Public Relations, media, advertising and government relations agency Jung Communications, is in charge of media strategy for the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly and manages the careers and brand images for Osiris and Isis. He is a world renown “Spinmaster” and media manipulator who has even managed the public relations and political media campaigns of the British Prime Minister. He is married to the daughter of media supermagnate Rupert Madox.

Teddy Zhou (or Zhou Tieya),  is Sartorius’ fellow professor and best friend at Peking University in Beijing who saves his life by rushing him to hospital after his suicide attempt and subsequently is paid back when Sartorius in turn saves his life during their Scuba diving adventures in the Maldives.  Like Sartorius, Teddy Zhou comes from a seafaring family and like Sartorius’s ancestor Admiral Sir George Rose Sartorius, one of his ancestors was shipwrecked in the Maldives in the time of Zheng He’s Treasure Fleet. Diving on both wrecks is their common goal in vacationing together in the Maldives.

Admiral Sir George Rose Sartorius, is Sartorius’ ancestor who fought in the British Navy under Lord Nelson at Trafalgar and later suffered a shipwreck in the Maldives, which wreck Sartorius and his friend Teddy Zhou seek to visit and dive upon on their Scuba diving holiday en route to taking up residence in London. Sartorius discover’s the Admiral’s journal and reads of his adventures following the shipwreck, including accounts of his visit to the island of the Sorceress Queen Lilith, and his captivity on the island of the Sultan of the Sea of Stories, where he also crosses paths with Zheng He and Ibn Batuta, famous venturers from the East.

Orlando Tasso, (aka Orlando Tancredi) in Book II is an agent of the Italian intelligence service the AISE, (Italy’s Agenzia Informazionie Sicurezza Estema or “Italian MI6”) and former Carabinieri on loan to the NATO Joint Anti-Terror Team (JATT) and British MI6 in London and in Jerusalem. Under cover as the Italian rock singer Tancredi he falls hopelessly and recklessly in love with Khlorindah, causing conflict and professional ineffectiveness between himself and Jack. Tasso echoes the motifs of Gerusalemme liberata and Orlando Furioso.

Khlorinda Sofronia Darwah, in Book II is a beautiful Palestinian Rai music Chaba singer performing in nightclubs in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with whom Orlando falls uncontrollably in love and who also infatuates Jack, leading the two into conflict; She proves to be a participant in the principal conspiracy organized through Mustafa to set off a nuclear device in Jerusalem and take former Presidents Carter and Clinton hostage as human shields to prevent American/Israeli attacks on Iran and enable the Triple Axis of China, Russia and Iran to seize the oilfields of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Middle-East, thus dominating the Eurasian and world balance of power with the West. She is invited by Jack to sing at the Jerusalem telethon in Teddy Stadium and then takes part in the hostage taking, flying with the hostage takers to Iran where she  Sartorius and Mohammad meet the Supreme Leader in the underground nuclear facilities at Qom.

Pari Kasiwar, of India is the South Asia coordinator for the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly.  He and Sartorius have deep discussions about the emergence of World Literature and Indian Literature as Sartorius prepares his book on the subject. He and his girlfriend Jennie Zheng relate their experience of partly growing up Asian-American in the USA in Book One, and he introduces her to Indian culture, spirituality and the sexuality of the Kama Sutra. They pursue their spiritual growth and interests together with the Global Progressive Spiritual Alliance, culminating in their founding as spiritual soulmates an Ashram at the Dal Lake embracing “The New Kama Sutra of the Spirit” at the end of Book Two.

President Barret Osama, elected as President of the United States in the course of the book is a liberal black president who succeeds the former conservative president following the World Financial Crisis.  When the Triple Axis powers China, Russia and Iran threaten to seize Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Middle-Eastern oilfields he leads NATO’s resistance, and after the Chinese then attack Russian Siberia he invites Russia and Japan to join NATO which then defeat the Chinese invasion. President Osama then becomes the first man in world history to be awarded two Nobel Peace Prizes when he earns his second one for his support of the creation of the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly at the close of the book.

Jennie Zheng, a student of Sartorius at Peking University who works a volunteer in China for the UN Parliamentary Assembly program and is interviewed by Etienne Dearlove for his Blog Live! Column in which she relates her experience growing up as an Amerian-Born Chinese(ABC), or Asian-American caught between two cultures and in search of her own identity.  Later in Book II after the nuclear detonation in Jerusalem and the trauma of war between the United States and China she turns inward spiritually, and together with her boyfriend from India, Pari Kasiwar, takes part in the Global Spiritual Progressive Alliance, founding an Ashram at Dal Lake and publishing her spiritual autobiography: “My Xi You Ji: A Personal Journey to the West.”

The Magister Ludi, or Master of the Game is the aged master of the Crystal Bead Game, which integrates all human knowledge and experience and which is conducted in the Grand Retort of Castalia, Middle Earth on the shores of the Great Central Sea at the Bay of Pellucidar at the center of the Earth. The historical destiny of the human race is mysteriously tied in parallel to the continuing outcome of this game, and when the game reaches a stalemate by which the human race may come to an end the Magister Ludi sets in motion a plan for saving man by sending Sartorius and his colleagues through a Wormhole from the center of the earth to the black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy from the Council of the Immortals meeting there to retrieve the Missing Crystal which can break the stalemate. Echoes Hermann Hesse’s classic character. At the end of Book Two, the Magister Ludi is revealed to be a time traveler from the 23^rd Century,  Senator Abor Linkin, who has returned to our present in pursuit of Caesarion Khannis, the leader of a failed coup attempt to overthrow the democratic United States of Earth and its Senate, like Julius Caesar, ending the Republic and ushering in a Universal Empire with himself as autocratic Emperor.

INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVEL AS A WHOLE:

I write to introduce to your attention my double novel Spiritus Mundi, consisting of Spiritus Mundi, the Novel—Book I, and Spiritus Mundi, the Romance—Book II. Book I’s espionage-terror-political-religious thriller-action criss-crosses the globe from Beijing to London to Washington, Mexico City and Jerusalem presenting a vast panorama of the contemporary international world, including compelling action, deep and realistic characters and surreal adventures, while Book II dialates the setting and scope into a fantasy (though still rooted in the real) adventure where the protagonists embark on a quest to the realms of Middle Earth and its Crystal Bead Game and through a wormhole to the Council of the Immortals in the Amphitheater in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy in search of the crucial Silmaril Crystal, and to plead for the continuance of the human race in the face of threatened extinction from a nuclear World War III, all followed by a triple-somersault thriller ending in which a common garden-variety terrorist attack is first uncovered by MI6 and the CIA as the opening gambit a Greatpower Game of States threatening World War III and then, incredibly, as the nexus of a Time Travel conspiracy involving an attempt by fascist forces of the 23rd Century to alter a benign World History by a time-travelling raid on their past and our present to provoke that World War III, foiled by the heroic efforts of the democratic 23rd Century world government, the Senate of the United States of Earth, to hunt down the fascist interlopers before their history is irrevocably altered for evil.

When activist Robert Sartorius, leading a global campaign to create a European Parliament-style world-wide United Nations Parliamentary Assembly presses the proposal in New York on his old friend the UN Secretary-General and is rebuffed due to the hostile pressure of the conservative American administration, his Committee resolves to fight back by launching a celebrity-driven Bono-Geldof-style “People Power” media campaign and telethon spearheaded by rock superstars Isis and Osiris and former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to mobilize global public support and pressure. The Blogs of Sartorius, activist Eva Strong and Committee Chairman Andreas Sarkozy reveal the campaign’s working struggle, their tangled love affairs, a loss of faith, attempted suicide, reconciliation of father and son after divorce, and recovery of personal love and faith.

Things fall apart as the idealists’ global crusade is infiltrated by a cell of jihadist terrorists using it as a cover, then counter-infiltrated by CIA agent Jack McKinsey and British MI6 agent Etienne Dearlove. A cat-and-mouse game of espionage and intrigue ensues pitting them against the Chinese MSS espionage network allied with the Iranian Quds Force crossing Beijing, London, Moscow, Washington and Jerusalem unleashing an uncontrollable series of events which sees the American Olympic Track and Field Team bombed on an airplane in London, uncovers a secret conspiracy of China, Russia and Iran to jointly seize the oil reserves of the Middle-East, and witnesses Presidents Clinton and Carter taken hostage with Sartorius, McKinsey, Eva and other activists at a Jerusalem telethon rally cut short by the explosion of a concealed atomic device in a loaned Chinese Terracotta Warrior, then flown by capturing terrorists to Qom, Iran as “human shields” to deter a retaliatory nuclear attack.

In Book II, Spiritus Mundi, the Romance they encounter Iran’s Supreme Leader in Qom as the world teeters on the brink of nuclear confrontation and World War III, while mysterious events unfold leading Sartorius and McKinsey from their captivity in the underground nuclear facilities of Qom into a hidden mythic dimension that takes them to a vast ocean and land at the center of the world, Middle Earth, Inner Shambhala, and to involvement in a mysterious Castalian “Crystal Bead Game” linked to the destiny of the human race on earth. They then embark on a quest for the Silmaril, or Missing Seed Crystal to the central island of Omphalos in the Great Central Sea in the middle of the globe, aided by Goethe, the Chinese Monkey King, Captain Nemo, the African God-Hero Ogun, and a Sufi mystic they traverse a ‘wormhole’ at the center of the earth guarded by ‘The Mothers’ and the fallen angel tribe of the Grigori (Genesis 6:1-4) which leads the way to critical meeting of the “Council of the Immortals” at the Black Hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy to determine the final fate of the human species. The heroes battle and overcome the treacherous opposition of Mephisto and his satanic subaltern Mundus through their Underworld and Otherworld adventures and successfully plead the cause of the continuation of the human species before the Immortals, returning with the critical Silmaril Crystal. resolving the Crystal Bead Game and thereby inspiring through the Archangel Gabriel a dream in the mind of Iran’s Supreme Leader which brings a new Revelation causing him to release the hostages and an end the crisis. China and Russia stand down from aiding Iran in seizing the Mid-East oil reserves, but in a treacherous blow the Chinese instead utilize their forward-positioned armies to attack their former ally Russia and seize Siberia with its large oil and gas reserves instead. President Barret Osama, America’s newly-elected first black President then invites Russia, Japan and South Korea to join NATO and together they succeed in expelling the Chinese from Siberia and usher in a new Eurasian and global balance of power and a New World Order.

Rock Superstar Osiris meanwhile, after undertaking a narcissistic Messianic mission in the wake of the Jerusalem atomic blast is dramatically assassinated on live world-wide television on Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa by a disillusioned follower. His wife and rock-star partner Isis then leads a spiritual movement to reconcile and unite the clashing religions and catalyze a common global spiritual Renaissance through a Global Progressive Spiritual Alliance which seeks to construct an Inter-faith Temple on the ruins of the atomic blast in Jerusalem. In counter-reaction to the cataclysmic events the world finally implements Sartorius’ crusade for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, but not before Sartorius has himself has died, Moses-like of a heart attack while helping to foil a metaconspiracy mediated by Time Travel in which a fascist agent from the 23rd Century who has time-transited back to our time to alter a benign history by causing WWIII and thus preventing the evolution of a democratic world government, the United States of Earth, which follows him through time and nabs him just in the “nick of time” to prevent Aramgeddon. The book ends with the opening ceremony of the UN Parliamentary Assembly which is attended in Sartorius’ name by his widow Eva Strong, whom Sartorius had fallen in love with and married in the course of the novel, and by their son Euphy, newborn after Sartorius’ death. They are joined in cinematic climax at the ceremony by newly chosen UN Secretary-General Clinton, President Osama and UN Parliamentary Assembly Committee Chairman Andreas Sarkozy who have just received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in creation of the world’s first world parliamentary assembly within the United Nations, bringing together the representative voices of the peoples of the world in face-to-face assembly and dialogue for the first time in world history.

Highlights:

All the Highlights of the novel cannot be contained in such a short Introduction, but a few of them would include:

1. Spiritus Mundi is the first novel in world history to portray the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assemblyon the working model, inter alia, of the European Parliament;

2. Spiritus Mundi is a prophetic geo-political WWIII novel of the near future forseeing a conflict and conspiratorial surprise attack by a resurgent “Axis” of China, Russia and Iran seeking by a decisive blow in jointly seizing the Middle-East oil fields to radically alter the global balance of power vis-a-vis the West in the world and Eurasia. Like Clancy’s The Bear and the Dragon, it forsees the inclusion of Russia in NATO, and goes far beyond in forseeing the inclusion of South Korea and Japan, following a joint Chinese-Russian occupation of a collapsing North Korea and the Axis strike at the Middle-Eastern oil fields;

3. Spiritus Mundi is an exciting espionage thriller involving the American CIA. British MI6, the Chinese MSS, or Ministry of State Security and the Russian SVR contending in a deul of intrigue and espionage;

4. Spiritus Mundi is a Spellbinding Terrorism/Counterterrorism novel involving a global plot to conceal an atomic bomb in a Chinese Teracotta Warrior to be detonated in Jerusalem;

5. Features the romantic and sexual searching and encounters of dozens of idealist activists, rock-stars, CIA and MI6 agents, public-relations spinmeisters and billionaires with a detour into the bi-sexual and gay scenes of Beijing, New York, California, London and Tokyo:

6. Establishes and grounds the new genre of the Global Novel written in Global English, the international language of the world,

7. Spiritus Mundi is a novel of Spiritual Searching featuring the religious searching of Sufi mystic Mohammad ala Rushdie, as well as the loss of faith, depression, attempted suicide and recovery of faith in life of protagonist Sartorius. Follows bogus religious cult leaders and the Messiah-Complex megalomanic-narcissistic mission of rock superstar Osiris that leads to his dramatic assassination on worldwide television in Jerusalem, followed by the religious conversion of his wife and rock-star parner Isis;

8. Features the search for love and sexual fulfillment of Eva Strong, a deeply and realistically portrayed divorced single mother involved in the United Nations campaign, who reveals her tortured heart and soul in her Blog throughout several disastrous sexual affairs and ultimately through her final attainment of love and marriage to Sartorius;

9. Features Sartorius’ experience of a bitter divorce, alienation and reconciliation with his son, his loss of faith and attempted suicide, his battle against drugs and alcoholism, his surreal and sexual adventures in Mexico City, and his subsequent redeeming love and marriage to Eva Strong;

10. Contains the in–depth literary conversations of Sartorius and his best friend, Literature Nobel Laureate Günther Gross, as they conduct worldwide interviews and research for at book they are jointly writing on the emergence of the new institution of World Literature, building on Goethe’s original concept of “Weltliteratur” and its foundations and contributions from all the world’s traditions and cultures;

11. Predicts the emergence of the institution and quest of “The Great Global Novel” as a successor to the prior quest after “The Great American Novel” in the newer age of the globalization of literature in Global English and generally;

12. Features the cross-cultural experiences and search for roots, sexual and spiritual fulfillment and authenticity of Asian-American character Jennie Zheng, and Pari Kasiwar of India;

13. For the first time incorporates in the dramatic narrative flow of action the mythic traditions of all the cultures and literatures of the world, including such figures as Goethe, The Chinese Monkey King, the African God-Hero Ogun, surreal adventures in the ‘Theatro Magico’ in Mexico City bringing to life figures from the Mayan-Aztec Popul Vuh, Hanuman from the Indian classic the Ramayana, and many more;

14. Book Two, Spiritus Mundi, the Romance is a fantastic Fantasy, Myth and Magical Realism Rollercoaster Ride: The more mythic Book Two utilizes a Wellsian motif of Time Travel to explore the making of history and its attempted unmaking (a la Terminator) by a hositile raid from the future on the past, our present, and the foiling of the fascist attempt by an alliance of men and women of goodwill and courage from past, present and future generations united in a Commonwealth of Human Destiny; Like Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day and Welles’ Journey to the Center of the Earth it involves a journey to an interior realm of the “Middle Earth;” it also contains a futuristic travel through a wormhole to the center of our Milky Way Galaxy for a meeting with the “Council of the Immortals” where the fate of the human race will be decided;

15. Is a fantastic read on a roller-coaster ride of high adventure and self-exploration!

C Copyright 2011 Robert Sheppard All Rights Reserved