Brooks Hansen Bücher

August Perlmann, Musikliebhaber, Lebemann und Pionier der "klinischen Suggestion" - der Spross einer jüdischen Wiener Familie hat es zum erfolgreichen Hypnosearzt an einer Londoner Klinik gebracht. Da wird ein Abend im Jahr 1906 zum Wendepunkt seines Lebens: Die junge, todkranke Sylvie Blum scheint besessen von der Idee, einer anderen Zeit und Welt zu entstammen und reißt Perlmann in einen Strudel aus Phantastischem und Unerhörtem. Vor allem die wunderschöne Madame Barrett, Spiritualistin und Schwester eines von Perlmann verehrten russischen Komponisten, macht Sylvies Fall zu einer Versuchung, die seine gesamte Existenz in Frage stellt.

Gerade haben Piorelli und Bette, das Spatzenpaar, zwei entzückende Küken ausgebrütet, da werden sie durch ein Unglück getrennt. Gäbe es nicht Cäsar, das Rentier, und Elsbeth, das Körnermädchen, wäre die Geschichte wohl schlimm ausgegangen.

In the fall of 1900, Dr. Gustav Uyterhoeven left the chess garden that he and his wife, Sonja, had created together in Dayton, Ohio, and journeyed to South Africa to serve as a doctor in the British concentration camps of the Boer War. Over the next ten months he sent twelve chess pieces and twelve letters back to Sonja. She set out her husband's gifts as they arrived and welcomed all the most faithful guests of the garden to come and hear what he had written - letters which told nothing of his experience of the camps but described an imagined land called the Antipodes, where all the game pieces that cluttered the sets and drawers of the garden collection came to life to guide the doctor through his fateful and wondrous last adventure. Brooks Hansen offers a tale of spiritual progress disguised in the most exotic visions of the imagination. And yet The Chess Garden encompasses a very real world, too. Alongside the doctor's visions of the Antipodes, the story of his life gradually unfolds as well. History and allegory are expertly woven until finally both lead back to the chess garden itself, a place where ideas give way to vision, reason meets faith, and fact and figment are finally reconciled.

Set in late autumn 1889, the story revolves around the mysterious death of an unidentified woman found by the Seine River in Paris. Displayed at the city morgue, her haunting beauty captivates onlookers but fails to draw a claimant. As the body awaits disposition, a mold is created of her face, resulting in a mask that evolves into a renowned cult artifact of the 20th century, highlighting themes of mortality, anonymity, and the allure of the macabre.