Alina in Ecstasy - Roccasalvo, Joseph

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Résumé :
Alina in Ecstasy is a novel about a man who is a famous writer and intensely hostile to religion. Julian Mandel, more an agnostic than an atheist, is in a rage over a former lover's decision to join the Carthusians-a religious order noted for silence and solitude. When he visits Alina, now Mother Maddalena, she claims not to recognize either Julian or herself as the persons involved in a former sexual relationship. Later, he learns she has died and been declared blessed by the pope. Obsessed by this development, he tries to prevent her advancement to sainthood. But when Julian is cured of terminal cancer, which the Vatican believes is a second miracle owed to Alina's intervention, he prays for the return of his cancer. When it does, he cannot avoid the thought that Alina has intervened to subvert her own canonization. The Vatican quickly responds by declaring that no protocol exists for treating as miraculous the reversal of a former miracle. This novel is meant to be spiritual reading cast as a psychological thriller: to inform a secular audience, against all odds, that love is stronger than death. The effort has succeeded if it fuses the erotic with the mystical like Bernini's statue of Saint Teresa now viewed through the medium of fiction. Alina in Ecstasy is intent on its goal: to tell how a saint is made. Miracles are the hook.

Biographie:
Joseph Roccasalvo followed his graduate degrees in philosophy, English literature, and theology by a Harvard PhD in comparative religion with a specialty in Buddhism. He has lived and taught in Boston, Bangkok, Chicago, and New York. For over ten years, he was associate professor at Chicago's Loyola University and Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus and visiting professor at Columbia University in New York and Franklin University in Switzerland. Now engaged in graduate-school mentoring, he is also a fiction writer. He published five novels: Fire in a Windless Place, Chartreuse, Portrait of a Woman, The Odor of Sanctity, and the Devil's Interval. Two novellas, Beyond the Pale and The Powers That Be, appeared as Double Entendre. There followed three books of short stories: Outward Signs, The Mansions of Limbo, and Triple Sec, then a play, Waging Waugh, and a memoir, As It Were. All are available on Amazon, including his rhymed version of Jesus's life, published as Gospel Limerck. He has guided students in journalism and international studies at the New School for Social Research and contributed essays to the newspaper's online column, A Word to the Wise. Recently published on Amazon are three new books: novella, Alina in Ecstasy; a collection of poetry, Poems for Two Violins; and the collected short stories, Twists of Faith.

Sommaire:
Joseph Roccasalvo completed his undergraduate and graduate studies in Classics, Philosophy, English Literature and Theology from Bellarmine College, Fordham University, and Woodstock College. In addition to these educational merits, he then earned his Harvard Ph.D. in Comparative Religion with a specialty in Buddhism. He studied Asian languages and religion and was trained as a comparative research scholar in global cultures, East and West. Joseph has received accolades for his publications and mentoring. In 2022, the International Association of Top Professionals (IAOTP) named him the Top Fictional Writer of the Year. He is the recipient of honors from Bristol Who's Who and is a member of the Catholic Writers Guild. He remains an active standing member of Harvard's Center for the Study of World Religions....