Richard Zimler's novels include The Search for Sana, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, and The Seventh Gate. He has won many prizes for his writing and has lectured on Sephardic Jewish culture all over the world. He now lives in Porto, Portugal, where he teaches journalism and writes.Zimler's latest novel is The Gospel According to Lazarus.
From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Gospel According to Lazarus?Visit Richard Zimler's website.
A: The idea came to me in a very disturbing dream I first had in 1989. To explain, I need to go back to a few years before that…
One of my elder brothers, Jerry, grew ill with AIDS around 1986. At the time, I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area and he was working in New York as a clinical psychologist. I helped him through a series of debilitating opportunist infections, including one that caused lesions in his brain and left him with dementia for about a week.
It was tremendously upsetting, of course. In fact, I often felt as if I’d been trapped in a merciless, ongoing nightmare. Caring for him in New York hospitals – feeding him and walking him around in his wheelchair – also gave me frequent panic attacks. I constantly feared that I, too, might die young – if not of AIDS, then of some other disease or misfortune.
Jerry died on May 6, 1989. He was only 35 years old. I was crushed. Losing a brother or sister makes you...[read on]
The Page 99: Guardian of the Dawn.
The Page 69 Test: The Gospel According to Lazarus.
My Book, The Movie: The Warsaw Anagrams.
Writers Read: Richard Zimler.
--Marshal Zeringue