Epic novel blends puppetry, race and particle physics

From the opening chapter of Reif Larsen's new novel "I Am Radar," it's clear that the book is about identity.

Larsen's epic story, which explores what happens when a black child is born to a white couple, soon takes off in unexpected directions — complicated twists that reflect the changes he imagined in the five years it took him to perfect it.

"For a while I was saying, 'It's about two white parents in New Jersey who birth a black child.' But that somehow seems misleading and incomplete," he said. "I also say it's a book about a performance troupe that performs puppet shows for populations suffering from war. But that also feels incomplete."

Larsen will read from the novel tonight at the Magers and Quinn bookstore in Minneapolis.

"I Am Radar" could be considered a series of interconnected novellas: Three center on Radar, the black child born in New Jersey in 1975. But others stretch the story back to the 1940s to relate the strange circumstances around the world which come to shape his life.

Larsen sets parts of his story in Norway after World War II, in Cambodia during the reign of the Khmer Rouge and in Bosnia during the Balkan War. There's also a trip up the Congo River.

The novel is not about race in America, Larsen said, but rather what happens to Radar as he meets with people who have experienced conflicts in distant parts of the world.

Larsen said he wanted to examine how wars are often based on a variety of conflicts: disputes over religion, ethnicity, tribes or surnames.

"We like to define ourselves differently from other people and we like to oppress other people. This comes up again and again," he said. "But at the end of the day it's incredibly arbitrary what those definitions are."

Radar and his family become involved in the conflicts through the puppet group called Kirkenesferda, an idea that occurred to Larsen while he read a news story about writer Susan Sontag performing "Waiting for Godot" during the siege of Sarajevo.

Larsen said he was left in awe at the bravery of Sontag, her cast and crew, rehearsing in a candlelit theater while snipers stalked the city.

"But that was paired with 'What the heck was she thinking?'" he recalled. "Like the audacity, the arrogance to think that these people wanted Beckett when a lot of them were [saying] 'Give us food and medicine,' and ... 'end the war.'"

Larsen used the story as a basis for the fictional Kirkenesferda, a Norwegian puppet group that emerges after World War II. Its members believe they can change the world through their shows which combine principals of particle physics with philosophy and folk tales. To them, they don't necessarily need an audience; performing is enough.

"That's one of the essential questions I'm getting at," Larsen said. "What is the role of art in our lives? Is it essential or is it a sort of luxury?"

As Radar and his parents try to find an explanation for his skin color, they become involved with the puppet group. Dermatologists have told them his condition is a rare, but uncomplicated, pigmentation anomaly.

The puppet group, which through its work in physics has developed extensive theories about the powers of electricity, offers an experimental treatment which will turn Radar's skin white. After much discussion his parents agree to the procedure, but it leaves him bald and subject to seizures.

Their relationship becomes infinitely more complicated as Radar's father becomes a convert and gets involved in the performances.

It took Larsen half a decade and a lot of travel to write "I Am Radar." As he looked for the tiny details that make descriptions of a place authentic, he went to Cambodia, Belgrade and to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He visited some places before he wrote and others afterwards.

"So I would create a kind of imaginary shadow Belgrade, then I would go to Belgrade and check my work," he said. "And inevitably I was more interested in the fictional Belgrade than the real Belgrade.

Larsen concedes that novel's ending is ambiguous, but said that's very deliberate. He wants to leave readers wondering.

"If a book sticks with you, and you can't square everything, and you have these lingering questions that gnaw at you, then a book has a long life," he said. "And I wrote that ending. I didn't want to close all the loops in the book. I wanted the book to sink its teeth in you and not let go for a long time."