In a Broken Star

Poetry. At the heart of IN A BROKEN STAR, we find the themes of diaspora and quest romance, prophecy and gnosis, which have long suffused Norman Finkelstein's poetry. The central poem of the book, The Adventures of Pascal Wanderlust, is a long narrative featuring an uncanny protagonist of indeterminate gender, age, and cultural identity, a bookish, wandering mage with mysterious links to the Immanent Foundation, the equally uncanny institution from Finkelstein's previous book, FROM THE FILES OF IMMANENT FOUNDATION, a work which Nathaniel Mackey read wishing it would never end. There are also intimate lyric sequences suffused with historical loss and cosmological vision. Poignant and darkly ironic, veering weirdly between Kafkaesque comedy and Lovecraftian creepiness, IN ABROKEN STAR may be Finkelstein's most compelling and sheerly entertaining work.