VOYAGE TO A PHANTOM CITY
by Christopher Bernard
paperback / $20.00 / ISBN: 978-1-58790-342-7 / 324 pages / paperback / 5.5” x 8.5”
Fiction / Novel
ABOUT THE BOOK
A spine-tingling adventure across the Sahara, and a heart-breaking romance . . . haunting memories of war and a long-lost America after the tragedy of September 11 . . . a spiritual quest into the heart of darkness . . . and the discovery of the supremely redemptive power of love. Voyage to a Phantom Cityis a philosophical adventure story that spans three continents and an entire generation. It is about love, politics, tragedy and the search for meaning in a chaotic time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christopher Bernard is author of the novel A Spy in the Ruins, the short-story collections Dangerous Stories for Boys and In the American Night, and The Rose Shipwreck: Poems and Photographs. He is co-editor of Caveat Lector and a regular contributor to Synchronized Chaos. Bernard writes fiction, poetry, essays, plays, and criticism. His poetry can be found online at The Bog of St. Philinte. He lives in San Francisco.
COMMENTS ABOUT
VOYAGE TO A PHANTOM CITY
… an enormous achievement …a spare beauty in all its baroque splendor. — Peter Bush, translator of The Gray Notebook, by Josep Pla, and the fiction and nonfiction of Juan Goytisolo
… [a] startlingly original quest novel …
— Emily Leider, author of Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino and Becoming Mae West
… visionary … heartfelt and brimming with experiential moments. — D. Donovan, Midwest Book Review
… a beguiling and poignant book, haunted by history, capturing the long decline of America … — Ernest Hilbert, author of All of You on the Good Earth and Sixty Sonnets and editor of E-Verse Radio
… beautiful and haunting ... — Anna Sears, author of Exile
If ever there was a time when readers are looking for explanations to life’s mysteries, sordid events and shocks, it is now. Christopher Bernard, close observer of the Zeitgeist, answers with Voyage to a Phantom City, … an adventure of “Indiana Jones” proportions. — Joan Gelfand, author of The Long Blue Room, and The Dreamer’s Guide to Cities and Streams
… a brilliant, unrelenting, exquisitely-written “voyage” … Voyage to a Phantom City is Christopher Bernard’s (in Céline’s phrase) voyage au bout de la nuit, his voyage to the end of the night. It is not for the faint of head and definitely not for the sentimentally inclined … Despite the many disasters its characters experience—because of them—it is ultimately a liberation from the false forms of optimism that surround us at every turn. — Jack Foley, author of EYES and O Powerful Western Star
… [it] will stay with you long after you close the book. — David Grayson
Bernard is the most culturally knowledgeable writer I know of: his resources are huge, awareness of modernist and post-modernist forms, for all I know, total, his virtuosity awesome. Yet Voyage, paradoxically or not, is a real page-turner. … Bernard is a poet, with the care for language that that implies … you will be ravished with words, with intense and vivid description … my recommended place to begin an engagement with Bernard's oeuvre …. — Curt Barnes