Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm very delighted to have as my guest, Seis Notabum.

He is a prominent Dutch writer visiting America.

His newest novel, Lost Paradise, has recently been published by Grove Press,

and we have talked several times, many times before.

He writes the kind of novel, which Calvino characterizes as light. That is to say, it is

deft, and it handles its immensities with great dexterity. His novels usually are short, and they are extremely

mysterious. This one, Lost Paradise, is no exception, and I have many ideas about it, which may, in fact, be the product of my

own dreams when reading a novel. Now, first off, this book is very complex and mysterious,

in that at its center there's a blank space.

And I think that what happens during that period, not covered by the novel, is very central to the book.

In fact, it is the center of the book.

Well, there you have me guessing, what you exactly mean by a blank space.

Well, we first meet an author who chooses a character.

She is found on an airplane, and he's going to write about her.

In fact, peculiarly, she is reading the very book he is about to write,

one of those extraordinary events that sometimes can happen in the world of fiction. She has, in her past, come from Brazil, experienced a rape, traveled with a girlfriend to heal in Australia, where she becomes

...