4/11/2023 0 Comments Gods of sand and desert![]() They call themselves the Ashtar Galactic Command.īut Kunzru, an Indian-Anglo writer who has proved the wealth of his imagination in three earlier novels - “ My Revolutions,” “ Transmission” and “ The Impressionist” - crams even more history into this highly original tale. It was, he thought, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.” In short order, this ex-pilot and wife-beater digs a bunker under the rock and transforms himself into “the Guide,” the contact for an extraterrestrial power, a spiritual leader with an army of Lightworkers selling his wacky recordings and luring ever more members to his mission. In time, as Schmidt surveys that range, he will be rewarded by a vision that approaches one lonely night at astonishing speed: “It was disk-shaped, featureless but for a ring of iridescent lights round the rim, like gem stones or feline eyes. . . Three columns of rock shot up like the tentacles of some ancient creature, weathered feelers probing the sky.” By the time the crazed war veteran runs a few tests with an earth meter and a divining rod, he has no doubt that the power is there, running along an ancient fault line. “First time Schmidt saw the Pinnacles he knew it was the place. In it, half a dozen stories play out on the gaping expanse of the Mojave Desert, where a miscellany of lost souls seeks salvation in the shadow of a three-fingered rock formation. Kunzru’s “ Gods Without Men” is a great, sprawling narrative, as vast as the canvas on which it is written. “The desert,” wrote Balzac, “is God without men.” It is siren and slayer, everything and nothing. A desert is where bombs go up and UFOs come down, where mirages, misadventures and miracles unfold. Even Coyote, the trickster god of Native American lore, darted nimbly from cactus to cactus. Muhammad spent his boyhood in the sand, among Bedouins. Throughout history, deserts have had a powerful grip on the human imagination: Jesus walked one for 40 nights. It isn’t the first time this landform has played such a starring role. In Hari Kunzru’s dazzling new novel, a desert is the setting, hero and villain.
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