(urth) Help needed in identifying an author and his books

[Fred Kiesche]

I second the suggestion: Edward Whittemore's Jerusalem Quartet. Relatively recently republished by Old Earth Books, but ALREADY GETTING HARD TO FIND!!!

So, run to ABE Books and seek ye these volumes.

See if these help:

<http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0824/p15s01-bogn.htm>

<http://www.locusmag.com/2002/Reviews/VanderMeer11.html>

<http://www.jerusalemdreaming.info/>

<http://www.oldearthbooks.com/index.htm>

Search on the following for "Whittemore" and you'll get a couple of good articles:

<http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/>

I sometimes wonder if it would be worth to examine "Cordwainer Smith" (Dr. Paul Anthony Linebarger) vs. Whittemore. Maybe there's a PhD thesis in them there tales...

I'd also recommend the single volume "Quin's Shanghai Circus". This was Whittemore's first work and a lot of the "Quartet" can be seen in there, in primordial form, so to speak.

F.P. Kiesche III  "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Blogging at TexasBestGrok!

--- On Fri, 8/22/08, Pedro Pereira <domus_artemis at hotmail.com> wrote:
From: Pedro Pereira <domus_artemis at hotmail.com>
Subject: (urth) Help needed in identifying an author and his books
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Friday, August 22, 2008, 4:03 PM




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In a totally unrelated way to Wolfe I would like to ask for some help from the good people of this list.

 

I remember reading, a long time ago, about a series of books about which I don't remember the names or the author. I know that the editions in print at the moment at Amazon.com have ilustrations of playing cards in the cover and if I remember correctly they have a grayish background. These novels are somewhat similar to Pynchon's stories. I don't remember details very well, so I may be wrong about what I'm going to say, but if I remember correctly some of them are part of a series and contain some of the following elements:

 

- a series of characters are playing a card game of which the outcome (if I remember correctly) will have great repercussions in the world

- one of those characters is immortal (wandering jew?)

- the card play is taking place somewhere in Jerusalem (or at least part of the book is)

- lots of historical curiosities, conspiracies, "pynchonesc" stuff, etc

- they are part of a series of books, me thinks

 

If I remember correctly, the author also has at least one book (I don't know if its part of the same series) that has a circus in it (chinese?), and ends with a bizarre, graphical description of the lions getting loose and a lot of spectators dying. 

 

Can someaone help me? Thanks in advance!

 

Pedro

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