Zimler, Richard 1956–

views updated

Zimler, Richard 1956–

(Richard C. Zimler)

PERSONAL: Born January 1, 1956, in Roslyn Heights, NY; son of Robert and Ruth (Goodkind) Zimler. Ethnicity: "Many." Education: Duke University, B.A., 1977; Stanford University, M.A., 1982. Hobbies and other interests: Gardening.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Constable & Robinson Ltd., 3 The Lanchesters, 162 Fulham Palace Rd., London W6 9ER England. E-mail—rczimler@ hotmail.com.

CAREER: Worked as a journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1982–90. College of Journalism and University of Porto, Porto, Portugal, journalism instructor, 1990–

AWARDS, HONORS: Fellow in fiction, National Endowment for the Arts, 1994; first prize, Panurge Short Fiction Contest, 1994; The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon was named one of thirty "literary events," LER magazine, 1997; Herodotus Award, International Mystery Society, 1998, for The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon; The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon was also named book of the year by the London Daily Telegraph, Gay Times, and Spectator, all 1998.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Unholy Ghosts, GMP Publishers (London, England), 1996.

(And translator of Portuguese edition) The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, Quetzal Editores (Lisbon, Portugal), 1996, Overlook Press (New York, NY), 1998.

The Angelic Darkness, Norton (New York, NY), 1999.

Hunting Midnight, Delacorte Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Guardian of the Dawn, Delta Trade Paperbacks (New York, NY), 2005.

The Search for Sana, Constable (London, England), 2005.

TRANSLATOR

A Portuguese Museum (museum exhibition catalog), Fundacao de Serralves (Oporto, Portugal), 1992.

Images for the 1990s (museum exhibition catalog), Fundacao de Serralves (Oporto, Portugal), 1993.

Al Berto, Days without Anyone and Other Poems, Mediterraneans (Paris, France), 1995.

Noah's Ark (museum exhibition catalog), Fundacao de Serralves (Oporto, Portugal), 1995.

Helena Almeida (museum exhibition catalog), Fundacao de Serralves (Oporto, Portugal), 1995.

The Garden of Fire (museum exhibition catalog), [Funchal, Portugal], 1996.

Marta Seixas (museum exhibition catalog), [Barcelona, Spain], 1996.

Nuno Judice, Kidnappings (poetry), 1998.

Agustina Bessa-Luis, Oporto's Many Sides (photography), [Lisbon, Portugal], 1998.

Al Berto, The Secret Life of Images (poetry), [Dublin, Ireland], 1998.

Also translated a photobiography of Jose Saramago, sonnets and other poems by Pedro Tamen, and stories by Clara Pinto Correia. Translated poems for periodicals, including Element, James White Review, Literary Review, and Puerto del Sol.

OTHER

Contributor to books, including The Book of Eros, Harmony Books (New York, NY), 1995; His 2, Faber (Boston, MA), 1997; Men on Men: 6, Plume (New York, NY), 1997; Seven Hundred Kisses, HarperCollins (San Francisco, CA), 1997; and Voices from Home, Avisson Press (Greensboro, NC), 1997. Contributor to periodicals, including Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, African American Review, Blue Light Red Light, Bronte Street, Element, Guys, Il Caffe, James White Review, Lactuca, LER, Literal Latte, London Magazine, Madison Review, Margin, Panurge, Puerto del Sol, RE Arts and Letters, San Miguel Writer, Santa Barbara Review, Sunk Island Review, Yellow Silk, and Z Miscellaneous.

Zimler's books have been published in several languages, including Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, Croatian, Greek, and Turkish.

SIDELIGHTS: American author Richard Zimler mixes aspects of Jewish philosophy and elements of a murder mystery in his novel The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon. In the preface, Zimler claims that the manuscript was found inside an old ceremonial chest in Istanbul, Turkey. He writes that the manuscript was found among other documents relating to the kabbalah (also spelled cabala), a mystical Jewish philosophy. According to Richard Bernstein in the New York Times Book Review, this claim is "clever," but not entirely believable because the sensibility of the characters is eminently modern. Although this book is a work of fiction, its setting does have an historical basis. It occurs during the 1506 Lisbon Inquisition, when the Portuguese government killed thousands of Jews. Fearing similar fates, other Jews converted to Christianity or practiced Judaism in secrecy.

In The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon the family of protagonist Berekiah Zarco secretly follows Jewish rites and explores the kabbalah. Berekiah, a young manuscript illuminator and fruit seller, returns home one night in 1506 to discover the nude bodies of his beloved uncle and a young girl dead in the family's secret prayer cellar. Berekiah must determine who killed the couple, as well as learn the killer's motive. His investigation leads the reader on a tour of sixteenth-century Lisbon and introduces omens, portents, more dead bodies, and the intricacies of the kabbalah. Other characters include Berekiah's companion, a highly perceptive Muslim, as well as a priest, a group of religious text smugglers, and the real-life Jewish historian Solomon Ibn Verga. Berekiah's trail leads to clues in the illustrations of a Haggadah, the Passover prayer book.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that the book has an "artificial, labyrinthine plot," but added that "its aura of constant menace and its startling, beautiful imagery steeped in Jewish mysticism" create a "memorable and haunting" novel. Bernstein observed, "I'm not sure how deep your understanding of cabala will become, but you will find yourself drawn into a moody, tightly constructed historical thriller that is both entertaining and instructive." A Kirkus Reviews contributor concluded that The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon is "a bit attenuated, but, on balance, one of the more unusual and interesting first novels of recent vintage."

Well familiar with Portugal because he has taught journalism there since the 1990s, Zimler also set his novel Unholy Ghosts in that country. This time, however, the story occurs in the present day. It is the story of an American classical guitar teacher who looks for a lifestyle change in Portugal after some of his close friends die of AIDS. Yet he cannot escape the specter of AIDS, as his gifted student, Antonio, discovers he also has the disease.

Zimler's The Angelic Darkness mixes the occult with concepts of androgyny as it reveals the "mystical account of a divorced man's struggle for personal transformation in 1980s San Francisco," according to a writer in Publishers Weekly. Bill Ticino is a womanizer whose constant philandering has finally destroyed his marriage. Emotionally weary, psychically fragile, and inexplicably afraid of the dark, Bill cannot sleep and deteriorates physically and emotionally. To ameliorate the loneliness of his newly empty home, he takes in a housemate, the inscrutable, androgynous, but handsome Peter. Bill develops a thorough fascination, even infatuation, for Peter that is fueled by Peter's poetic mode of speech, his strange stories, his seeming ability to read Bill's mind, and his peculiar collection of talismans and Holocaust relics. Bill finds himself falling further into a world he had never known before, a landscape of sexual ambiguity, prostitution, transvestitism, teenage runaways, and androgyny. Zimler "excels at suspenseful depictions of such heightened states," commented Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman. As Bill works through issues surrounding his own androgyny, he finds the keys to his own transformation. Library Journal reviewer Robert E. Brown called the book "interesting, quirky fiction for curious readers susceptible to the curious."

Hunting Midnight offers a "rich blend of insight and imagination" in a "dazzling new novel," commented Elizabeth Rosner in Tikkun. The novel begins in 1798 Porto, Portugal, when the protagonist, John Zarco Stewart, is seven years old. He is the son of a Scottish father and a Portuguese mother who is a Marrano, or hidden Jew. When he is nine years old, John is cursed by a necromancer, a disturbing event for a young boy. The curse appears to be genuine to John, whose best friend drowns in an accident, while another friend, Violeta, is abruptly taken away by her parents who apparently have been abusing her. A surprising guest in his home appears able to help John deal with his problems. Midnight, an African bushman, becomes John's trusted companion and teacher, but tragedy descends again as Midnight is shot by a local landowner for poaching.

In the novel's second half, John is an adult who has discovered an act of treachery in his father's past. He travels to Antebellum America to search for Midnight, who survived the shooting. There, he sees firsthand the horrors of slavery in its fullest form. John's search becomes a determined effort to right a tremendous wrong visited upon the man who taught him life's most important lessons as he was growing up. The narrative also intertwines around the life of the teenage slave Morri, as her life and John's slowly begin to intersect, with Midnight as the connecting point. "The bridge she creates between the two worlds is testimony to the talents of this novelist," Rosner observed. "There are profound glimpses here of the solidarity possible between Jews and blacks, among those who are able to recognize in one another's suffering the potential for collaboration and liberation," Rosner stated. Ilene Cooper, writing in Booklist, remarked that Zimler is a "superbly talented historical novelist." A Publishers Weekly contributor observed that "the narrative has a vintage flavor that becomes absorbing."

Guardian of the Dawn tells the story of Tiago Zarco, a half-Jewish, half-Indian man who finds himself betrayed by a member of his family and subjected to the cruelties of the Inquisition. A talented graphic artist, Tiago's comfortable life in Goa, Portugal, is shattered when he and his father are captured and imprisoned by the Inquisition. In order to save himself, Tiago professes Christianity, and he is imprisoned in Lisbon, where he spends many bleak years. Steeped in unrelenting fury during his imprisonment, Tiago constructs an elaborate plan for revenge against the person who betrayed him and against the priest who sentenced him and his father to their dismal fates. When Tiago is eventually released, he puts his deadly plan on hold after discovering that the person who betrayed him is someone much closer to home than he suspected. "Moody, atmospheric and at times ink-black with pain, Zimler's writing conjures vivid pictures of Portuguese Goa, of imprisonment and of personal devastation," observed Jessica Mulley on the Virtual Bookshelf Web site. "The weird contrast of Christianity at its most murderous and India at its most sumptuous jars the senses as crime and punishment work their usual spell in this deeply absorbing work," commented a Kirkus Reviews critic.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 1998, Bill Ott, review of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, p. 1395; September 1, 1999, Donna Seaman, review of The Angelic Darkness, p. 70; August, 2003, Ilene Cooper, review of Hunting Midnight, p. 1960.

Guardian (London, England), January 29, 2005, Elena Seymenliyska and Alfred Hickling, "Busy Dying," review of Guardian of the Dawn.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 1998, review of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, p. 297; May 15, 2003, review of Hunting Midnight, p. 714; May 15, 2005, review of Guardian of the Dawn, p. 563.

Library Journal, March 1, 1998, Margee Smith, review of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, p. 130; August, 1999, Robert E. Brown, review of The Angelic Darkness, p. 144.

New Leader, June 29, 1998, Tova Reich, review of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, p. 30.

New York Times Book Review, July 19, 1998, Erik Burns, review of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, p. 18; August 28, 1998, Richard Bernstein, review of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon.

Publishers Weekly, January 26, 1998, review of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, p. 68; August 2, 1999, review of The Angelic Darkness, p. 73; June 2, 2003, review of Hunting Midnight, p. 31.

Tikkun, September-October, 2003, Elizabeth Rosner, review of Hunting Midnight, p. 78.