The Notorious Dream of Jesus Lazaro

In this intelligent, literary novel, an infamous Mexican muralist named Jesús Lázaro comes to San Francisco, where his work sparks protests in the street, gets the attention of the Vatican, sets off a disastrous love triangle, and may or may not invoke the wrath of God.

Terence Clarke is the director of publishing at Astor & Lenox (http: //astorandlenox.com). He is also a novelist (Mercury House, Ballantine Books), a short-story writer (The Yale Review, The Antioch Review, The Chariton Review, Kindle Singles and many others), a journalist (San Francisco Chronicle, Salon.com, Huffington Post), and a translator of literature from Spanish to English. Among his favorite authors, he mentions Jane Austen, Frank O’Connor, and Eduardo Galeano. (His absolute favorite novel is Pride and Prejudice.) His own novels include My Father in the Night, The King of Rumah Nadai, and A Kiss for Senor Guevara. His short-story collections include The Day Nothing Happened, Little Bridget and the Flames of Hell, and New York (which will be published in 2015). ＂There has never really been a time when I haven’t been writing,＂ he says. ＂When I was a student, I was very influenced by the life styles of the Romantics, and went around with a manufactured scowl on my face, bearing the poetic weight of the world. It didn’t hurt that I was living in San Francisco at the time, and could emulate the Beatniks I saw worrying publically about their manuscripts in local cafes. As I began publishing my work, though, I discovered --more truthfully-- that I love the process of writing. The puzzle of telling a story. The searching for, and the creation, of a memorable character. The exploration of feeling, the fine pleasure of bringing a story to fruition. Writing’s tough. But now, it is simply a joyful undertaking for me.＂ Clarke still lives in San Francisco. His latest novel, The Notorious Dream of Jesus Lazaro, was published in 2015.＂