The Great Cyprus Think Tank is narrated by Bart Beasley, a dejected Canadian author of cultural memoirs who yearns to return to Cyprus, where he spent his youth and where he might shake off his ennui. He forms a think tank of renowned but flawed experts to tackle crises still besetting the fabled island in 2024. The birthplace of Aphrodite is parched, its famed sea turtles face extinction, its songbirds are swallowed whole by native epicures, and Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, if no longer dispatching one another, rarely send over a bottle of wine. A string of felicitous adventures and seeming successes follows, while romantic liaisons spring up within the think tank’s ranks. Where else but in Cyprus could the Fellows hope to unearth Pygmalion’s ancient showgirl sculpture of Aphrodite in time for Kataklysmós, an annual celebration of Noah’s flood when Cypriots take to the sea and flirtatiously splash one another? Unknown to all but alert readers is a counterplot to waylay the think tank’s best designs.
Also available in hardcover.
eBooks
Reviews
“To grasp Cyprus in its essence both mythic and real, hurry up and join Bart Beasley’s fantastic expedition, as told in this priceless novel by master storyteller Larry Lockridge.”
--Takis Kayalis, Professor of Modern Greek Literature, Hellenic Open University, formerly with the University of Cyprus
“Fast on the heels of his brilliant The Cardiff Giant, Larry Lockridge has done it again, and differently: in The Great Cyprus Think Tank, we are seized by the whirlwind that is our memoirist Bart Beasley and placed on an island: what could go wrong? Lockridge’s novel offers a fizzing brew of ideas, erotic shenanigans, cultural commentary, and stylistic brio – a kind of mock-heroic triumph as our benevolent hero establishes his “think tank” on Cyprus and pursues en route Rimbaud’s famous lost notebook. With the lightest of touches and a rapier wit, Lockridge conjures a sociable intellectual frolic that effortlessly ingathers everything from climate change to animal rights to Shakespeare to mirror neurons to the upheavals of Cypriot history. Mindful of all kinds of disaster, this is a novel of deep comedy, energy, and chastened joy. I strongly advise you to ride out any tsunami on the backs of Lockridge’s sea turtles.”
--Maureen N. McLane, author of My Poets and More Anon: Selected Poems
Author(s)
Larry Lockridge
Larry Lockridge is a writer living in New York City. Professor Emeritus of English, New York University, and a Guggenheim Fellow, he is best known for the prizewinning biography of his father, Shade of the Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr., author of Raintree Count
Marcia Scanlon
Marcia Scanlon, painter, sculptor and poet, has studios in Soho and Upstate New York. She has been represented by John Stoller, Gettler-Paul, Maxwell Davidson, and Central Booking. Her artwork is in personal, corporate, library, and museum collections here and abroad.