What moves the Archangel Michael to recruit Gustave Termi, a boozy, middle-aged Swiss history professor in modern-day Geneva, into his legions of divine warriors? It's a total mystery to Gustave, who isn't even sure he believes in God, and is certainly no one's idea of a warrior. He tries psychoanalysis to clear up the visions. That doesn’t work, but a chance encounter with journalist Martine Jeanrenaud in the therapist’s waiting room changes his life. Here again, the mysterious hand of Providence, in which Gustave doesn't believe, is at work: Martine has recently published the biography of another unlikely mystic, an early 20th-century Austrian aristocrat and teacher, Stefanie von Rothenberg, who not only had steady visits from heaven and hell but equally steady earthly ones from a bizarre but tenacious swain named Adolf Hitler.
Meanwhile, Gustave contends in his daily life with intensified interest from the Archangel, unwelcome scrutiny from his employers and other authorities, a growing concern that he's losing his mind, and a feeling that Stefanie's story is becoming his story, too.
Meanwhile, Gustave contends in his daily life with intensified interest from the Archangel, unwelcome scrutiny from his employers and other authorities, a growing concern that he's losing his mind, and a feeling that Stefanie's story is becoming his story, too.
I am the author of the internationally acclaimed Irish satires Killoyle, The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad, and The Maladjusted Terrorist.
The Adorations is a novel in two dimensions.
Of all the cities in the world, of all the homelands that a man seeks to earn, Geneva seems to me to be the one most likely to bring happiness. Jorge Luis Borges