Carleton’s Regional Carls Program

The Atlanta Carleton Club invites you to a reading of

levon a (a China story told in reverse chronology)
by Jeff Radke '98

Friday, September 16, 2016
6 p.m.

Barnes & Noble
48 5th Street, Atlanta, GA

The story is about China and the spectacular economic growth it has experienced. Levon a focuses on three characters who represent the past, present and future of a nation that has developed so rapidly in recent years that living there makes you feel, according to Jeff, "as if you can achieve anything".

The beautiful storytelling is the triumph of the novel, and readers who initially question the experimental format will sing its praises by the end. Similar reverse order has been executed by literary greats such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and even Plato. It works in Levon a (a novel, backwards) because it serves to deepen the meaning of the actions. After the enigmatic characters experience the consequences of their choices, the complex reasons and events that occurred previously reveal why they made them.

Jeff wrote part of the novel while living in Atlanta. At that time, he and his wife Erin hosted our alumni book club at their home in Grant Park.

The Chinese poet and activist Sheng Xue calls Jeff "an American novelist with excellent imagination and a sense of historical responsibility."

Question? Contact Jeff.