Pride Month Reading: Make the Dark Night Shine with Alan Lessik
Schedule
Thu Jun 27 2024 at 07:00 pm
UTC+02:00Location
Erlesenes & Büchergilde | Mainz, RP
Free admission, please register via e-mail at [email protected]. Celebrating Pride Month, U.S. author Alan Lessik will present his novel and discuss its central topics with the audience. Inspired by the author’s family history, Make the Dark Night Shine (Rebel Satori Press 2023) is a love letter from a father to the daughter he never met.
In 1919, Kenzo Uchida and his same-sex partner Mitsu arrive in Constantinople to open the new Japanese Consulate. Kenzo meets Elisa, a feisty Ukrainian cigarette girl in a nightclub and she becomes his consort to hide his gay relationship while in Europe. The unlikely trio begin an adventure in the decadence of post-war Paris until disaster strikes. Returning to the growing militarism in Japan, Kenzo finds an unexpected path in Zen Buddhism. Yet no teachings prepare him for the revelations to come — about his life, his loves, and the events around him. On the eve of WWII, he discovers that he has a daughter living with Elisa in New York. He leaves the monastery on a perilous mission to promote peace with a secret plan to reunite with his daughter Nina.
Cinematic in scope, this novel lyrically captures the world on the brink of war. As Kenzo builds — and fights for — his chosen family, larger forces threaten all. Sweeping, meditative, and achingly beautiful, Make the Dark Night Shine explores the many worlds a life can inhabit, and the hidden worlds we find in ourselves.
