Award-winning poet Nosael Gy Gleason observed that people are appreciative, or at least tolerant, of others with different preferences in food, dress, and the like. However, when it comes to religion, common sense for the welfare of others, for the betterment of humanity or for promoting peace gets replaced by a sense of righteousness and bitter judgment. Hence, a new book entitled Philo of Reli has materialized that will compel readers to question the reality of knowing, of believing, and of deciding whether philosophy - which at times contributes to the confusion - and religion could be intermarried.
Gleason's book journeys through the depths of passion and prudence, of belief and rationality, of theology and philosophy. Loosely interlinked ordinary people represent moral allegories that attempt to explain whether free will or determinism exists, or whether humanity simply exists in a random set of events. The book's overall theme is the merging of religious credos with philosophical underpinnings, the thematic crux of this fictional novel.
There are various characters that weave and telescope in and out of what seems like a state of flux and chaos, but with a degree of predictability, as if atoms bouncing from one another to create nuclear fission. It has similarities to the frame story exemplified by The Canterbury Tales and 1001 Nights, where each character tells a story, whose stories are randomly moving parts of a whole, loosely held together by chance and fate. For example, a minor character becomes the highlight of Gleason's next chapter and as a result there are no true protagonists or one predominant setting. The scenes shift from Eastern Europe to Scandinavia to the United States based on movements by individual characters.
A love story of poly-plots and poly-protagonists, filled with pathos, bathos and ethos that suffuse every human drama, but with passions that are tempered with prudence, Philo of Reli is indeed a groundbreaking work that brings to life many philosophical and theological concepts put forward by several notable philosophers. Readers will be left wondering about the probability of the butterfly effect, Intelligent Design versus Darwinism, determinism or free will, and other more controversial and practical issues.
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About the Author
Nosael Gy Gleason's amateur writing career began in 1999 with the publication of several "arrhythmic" poems that garnered the Distinguished Poet Award for "Sprinklers", and the following year the Honorable Mention in the Voices of the New Century Award for "Windy Kisses" by Sparrowgrass Poetry Forum, Sistersville, West Virginia. In March 2006, Gleason became the recipient of the Editor's Choice by Poetry.com and International Library of Poetry. "An Old Marriage" was selected as a semi-finalist at the National Amateur Poetry Competition (Eber & Wein Publishing) in May 2010. "When Emily Left," an excerpt from one of the chapters in Philo of Reli, was selected as one of five finalists of Warren Adler's Divorce Short Story Contest in March, 2012.
Philo of Reli * by Nosael Gy Gleason
Trade Paperback; $19.99; 282 pages; 978-1-4836-6644-0
Trade Hardback; $29.99; 282 pages; 978-1-4836-6645-7
eBook; $3.99; 978-1-4836-6646-4
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