Lost Empress

by Sergio De La Pava

Genres: Literary Fiction; Visionary & Metaphysical; Dystopian

Synopsis

From the acclaimed PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize-winning author of A Naked Singularity, a shockingly hilarious novel that tackles, with equal aplomb, both America's most popular sport and its criminal justice system

From Paterson, New Jersey, to Rikers Island to the streets of New York City, Sergio de la Pava's Lost Empress introduces readers to a cast of characters unlike any other in modern fiction: dreamers and exiles, immigrants and night-shift workers, a lonely pastor and others on the fringes of society—each with their own impact on the fragile universe they navigate.

Nina Gill, daughter of the aging owner of the Dallas Cowboys, was instrumental in building her father's dynasty. So it's a shock when her brother inherits the franchise and she is left with the Paterson Pork, New Jersey's failing Indoor Football League team. Nina vows to take on the NFL and make the Paterson Pork pigskin kings of America. All she needs to do is recruit the coach, the players, and the fans.

Meanwhile, Nuno DeAngeles—a brilliant and lethal criminal mastermind—has been imprisoned on Rikers Island for a sensational offense. Nuno fights for his liberty—while simultaneously planning an even more audacious crime.

In Lost Empress, de la Pava weaves a narrative that encompasses Salvador Dalí, Joni Mitchell, psychiatric help, emergency medicine, religion, theoretical physics, and everything in between. With grace, humor, and razor-sharp prose, all these threads combine, counting down to an epic and extraordinary conclusion.

Cast of Narrators:
Main Narration — Edoardo Ballerini
Nina Gill &mdashp; Carol Monda
Dia Nouveau — Brittany Pressley
Nuno de Angeles — James Fouhey
Major Harris — Bob Bray
Daniel Gill — Richard Topol
Sharon Seaborg — Quincy T. Bernstine
Hugh Seaborg — Ryan Anderson
Coach Elkins — Richard Ferrone
Feniz Heredia — Tony Chiroldes
Larry Brown — Jeff Gurner
Travis Mena — Dan Bittner
Nelson Cervantes — Gonzalo Ingram
Solomon Hanes — David LeDoux
Reeves — Leo Coltrane
Ed Coin — Johnny Heller
Many Mutola — Nick Martorelli
Father Ventimiglia — Mark McCarthy
The Theorist — Geoffrey Campbell
Nina's Father — Richard Poe

Additional roles read by some of the above and by Francisco Burgos, Christina Delaine, Sue Daulton, Karen Dziekonski, Jim Frangione, Tavia Gilbert, Lianna Gomori, Sarah Jaffe, Pete Larkin, Paula Parker, Angel Saldana, Adriana Sananes, Brandon Ruben, Paul Ruben, Jen Rubins, and Dan Zitt.

Release date: May 8, 2018

Publisher: Vintage

Print pages: 640

Sample

Because it will remain true, even then: that we will only see before affect after, only sense the immediate, and dumbly feed on the invis­ible other.
 
And in 2042 a woman with indeterminately colored eyes will suffer the first known case of mass reverse amnesia (codified thereafter and for the first time in DSM-XI). Meaning she will one day wake to find that while her perception of her surroundings is unchanged, she’s now perfect stranger to all who knew her. This absence of external recog­nition both perfect and consistent.
 
She will look in mirrors. It will still look like her; will still be her, right? She will move through confusion and space. Her head will hurt as if from a blow. Everything will look the same but nothing will cohere into meaning. Yet this absence of meaning will clearly apply to her alone. The clockwork of the world will continue to grind forward and she will more and more feel like disinterested observer.
 
Although there will be freedom too. Because if no one knows who you are today that means no one knows who you were. Magnifying greatly the power of self-reinvention inherent in something like start­ing a new job or moving to a new school. Also the freedom that comes from realizing it may all just be a game. After all, if you can wake one day to find you’ve been converted into a complete unknown, then it seems fair to posit that, when it comes to existence, really anything at all is in play.
She’ll agonize, through tears, about whether life is screwball com­edy or soap opera, will feel like those are the only two options. But how truth could equally underpin both.
 
Let me explain. Was Mathematics invented or discovered?
 
Formalists (invented) and Platonists (discovered) will still not have agreed (true advancement will not come where you’d like, it will stay confined to things like pixels). Of course, the only reason the question will remain relevant is that Math will continue to be so unreasonably effective at describing the natural world. So, to take a classic example, Newton will seemingly invent calculus (some debate, Leibniz?) and others, centuries later, will discover that it accurately, to an extreme level, depicts our physical reality, which reality of course is decidedly not a Newtonian invention. See? One possible explanation is that although it felt like an invention what Newton was actually doing was discovering a truth and that’s why his invention has persisted.
 
The afflicted woman will focus intensely on this issue but ulti­mately conclude that Life is neither, it’s endurance. Your new reality is formed hourly or even more frequently and the universe has approxi­mately zero interest in how you feel about that fact, only what you emit in response.
 
She will look into a still, standing body of water and address her reflected self.
 
She will conclude that, finally, it’s Beauty will destroy us all.
 
She will, she’ll decide, endure.