In a land of detritus, wreckage and fire that strongly pre-figures the apocalyptic mise en scene of Lessons Of Darkness,
Fata Morgana offers an increasingly despairing and disillusioned view of mankind as corrupter and polluter of an almost primeval landscape, set in poignant and marked relief only by the native people who wander aimlessly, as though lost, amid the technological flotsam and jetsam that has turned their (our) land into a graveyard.
It was the ne plus ultra plant of its time, when visions of "automatic factories" were the
Fata Morgana of automotive executives: Robots would do the heavy lifting, the complex tasks, and practically everything else.
The twenty-six studies are presented in chronological order, being preceded by a lucid, introductory contextualizing survey by Luc Fraisse and followed by the transcript of a discussion between the latter and Bruno Roy (the founder of the publishing firm
Fata Morgana) on collecting manuscripts.
Its modern attractions include the disorientating Villa Volta, the hugely-popular fantasy Dream Flight and
Fata Morgana, a mystical boat trip through the Orient similar to Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean.
The chapter then moves to a discussion of the ethnographic pieces written by Celati on the imaginary land of Gamuna and part of a long work in progress titled
Fata Morgana: Notizie sul popolo dei Gamuna.
Especially intriguing for their thrust are Kuyper's early social critique ("Uniformity: The Curse of Modern Life"), which shows a surprisingly Romantic side of Kuyper; his brilliant "Modernism: A
Fata Morgana in the Christian Domain" (which could serve as a prophylactic against the seduction of neolatry); "Common Grace" and "Common Grace in Science" (for Kuyper's own formulations of his distinctive contribution to neo-Reformed systemics); and "Evolution," which both skewers naturalism more than some would expect while also respecting organic development more than often anticipated.
But I would not characterize it, as the Iraqi critic, 'Ali Jawad al-Tahir, does in his review in the Baghdad newspaper Al-Thawra, as a non-Iraqi or non-Arabic novel.(19) Similar to the Najib Mahfuz' novel Al-Sarab ("
Fata Morgana"), published in 1948, its male protagonist feels himself bound so much to his mother that he is unable to love a young woman.
His greatest novel,
Fata Morgana (1904-10), represented a new approach to the traditional theme of social conflict in a small village.
He adapted
Fata Morgana (1931) from the Hungarian in collaboration with J.L.A.