@article{717547,
      recid = {717547},
      author = {Larsen, Reif.},
      title = {I am Radar /},
      pages = {656 pages :},
      abstract = {"The moment just before Radar Radmanovic is born, all of  the hospital's electricity mysteriously fails. The delivery  takes place in total darkness. Lights back on, the staff  sees a healthy baby boy-with pitch-black skin-born to the  stunned white parents. No one understands the uncanny  electrical event or the unexpected skin color. "A  childbirth is an explosion," the ancient physician says by  way of explanation. "Some shrapnel is inevitable, isn't  it?" A kaleidoscopic novel both heartbreaking and dazzling,  Reif Larsen's I Am Radar begins with Radar's perplexing  birth but rapidly explodes outward, carrying readers across  the globe and throughout history, as well as to unknown  regions where radio waves and subatomic particles dance to  their own design. Spanning this extraordinary range with  grace and empathy, humor and courage, I Am Radar is the  vessel where a century of conflict and art unite in a  mesmerizing narrative whole. Deep in arctic Norway, a cadre  of Norwegian schoolteachers is imprisoned during the Second  World War. Founding a radical secret society that will  hover on the margins of recorded history for decades to  come, these schoolteachers steal radioactive material from  a hidden Nazi nuclear reactor and use it to stage a surreal  art performance on a frozen coastline. This strange society  appears again in the aftermath of Cambodia's murderous  Khmer Rouge regime, when another secret performance takes  place but goes horrifically wrong. Echoes of this disaster  can be heard during the Yugoslavian wars, when an  avant-garde puppeteer finds himself trapped inside  Belgrade, while his brother serves in the genocidal militia  that attacks Srebrenica. Decades later, in the war-torn  Congo, a disfigured literature professor assembles the  largest library in the world even as the country around him  collapses. All of these stories are linked by Radar-now a  gifted radio operator living in the New Jersey  Meadowlands-who struggles with love, a set of hapless  parents, and a terrible medical affliction that he has only  just begun to comprehend. As I Am Radar accelerates toward  its unforgettable conclusion, these divergent strands  slowly begin to converge, revealing that beneath our  apparent differences, unseen harmonies secretly unite our  lives. Drawing on the furthest reaches of quantum physics,  forgotten history, and mind-bending art, Larsen's I Am  Radar is a triumph of storytelling at its most primal,  elegant, and epic: a breathtaking journey through  humanity's darkest hours only to arrive at a place of  shocking wonder and redemption"--},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/717547},
}