Plans of the Deathless Gods

About the Book

BOOK SUMMARY

Plans of the Deathless Gods.

The time: the seven years (1785-1792) before the breakup of European order instigated by the French Revolution.

The scene: Prussia, South Africa, New Zealand.

The characters: Curt Christoph von Allmen, who proposes the plan of a New Zealand sealing station as medium of commerce with China; his twin sister Maria, who composes an epic poem to commemorate its founding; their friend, philosopher Adam Sixtus l’Estrange, whose ruminations on the times issue in a surprising discovery.

The plot: Curt Christoph, a philhellene, envisions New Zealand as the scene of a restored Apollonianism—which his sister’s epic playfully portrays, and Adam Sixtus’ philosophical discovery ironically supports.

About the Author

Author’s Life John Strang was born in Kirtland, Ohio and studied philosophy, classics, German and history at various American colleges and at the University of Freiburg, Germany. He obtained his doctorate in philosophy in 1984 from Boston University and has taught for over ten years at one of the colleges of the University of New Hampshire system. Plans of the Deathless Gods was originally conceived as a response to a father’s taunt about “warmongering Prussians” but developed over the years into the presentation of a philosophical discovery in a novelistic form.