Brian Kiteley – författare

From the author of Still Life with Insects comes a contemporary tale of an unlikely connection between an American historian and an Armenian theater critic on the streets of Cairo.While in Cairo, Ib, an American historian and translator crosses paths with an Armenian-born theater critic and drama teacher, Gamal-Leon. Gamal-Leon begins to trace Ib’s every step, playing practical jokes on him in an effort to challenge Ib’s easygoing view on life. Examining the balance between contemporary Egypt and western culture, Kiteley shares a tale of two strangers roaming through the night as he takes readers on an entrancing trip of forgiveness as Ib learns to swim against the tide.

The River Gods is a novel in fragments, a mix of fact and fiction, in which various inhabitants of the area around what is now Northampton, Massachusetts, from the eleventh century through the 1990s, speak of their lives and of the community, a place haunted by the pervasive melancholy of extinguished desire. Each of the voices - including a character named Brian Kiteley and his family, the original Native American inhabitants, the actor Richard Burton, Sojourner Truth, Richard Nixon, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jonathan Edwards, and many nameless others - ruminate on a past that is startlingly present and tangible. The main character, though, is the world of Northampton, irrevocably woven into the fabric of Western history, yet still grounded by the everyday concerns of health, money, food, love, and family. It is a novel of voices, the living and the dead, that illuminate the passage of time.

The River Gods is a novel in fragments, a mix of fact and fiction, in which various inhabitants of the area around what is now Northampton, Massachusetts, from the eleventh century through the 1990s, speak of their lives and of the community, a place haunted by the pervasive melancholy of extinguished desire. Each of the voices--including a character named Brian Kiteley and his family, the original Native American inhabitants, the actor Richard Burton, Sojourner Truth, Richard Nixon, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jonathan Edwards, and many nameless others--ruminate on a past that is startlingly present and tangible. The main character, though, is the world of Northampton, irrevocably woven into the fabric of Western history, yet still grounded by the everyday concerns of health, money, food, love, and family. It is a novel of voices, the living and the dead, that illuminate the passage of time.