About the Work

A Beautiful World tells the story of recent graduate Les in a Dante-esque journey through a new and unfamiliar world. Following a false sexual allegation in his New Jersey community, the resulting social exile to New York City, and the assault and murder of his pregnant girlfriend, Les bears the shattered aftermath of what he believed to be a new and promising beginning. Shunned by his community and riven by feelings of loss, forced exile, revenge, and alienation, Les struggles to find his place in a world that feels less and less like home. Full of down-to-earth, yet quirky and complex characters – themselves coming to terms with their own traumatic pasts – who guide Les on his psychological and philosophical journey, A Beautiful World raises questions of racism, social and psychological isolation, and the human capacity for violence, in a story of urban realism as hard as the concrete jungle in which it takes place, culminating in a shocking and tragic conclusion.

What Inspired the Book

The inspiration driving A Beautiful World is what inspires me in most of my fiction: the unforeseeable consequences of human thought and action, the half notes that can turn a world from goodness to evil, or vice versa. Confronting head-on the often misunderstood motivations behind our actions and their consequences. In the spirit of writers like Philip Roth and Ian McEwan, I am interested in exploring the logics underlying what seem on their surface to be irrational behaviors, the vagaries of human communication, the collision between idealism and reality, and the sometimes agonizing effort of moving beyond trauma and the dangerous possibility of falling prey to its deleterious influences.

Who’s It For?

Though I welcome all audiences, my works are geared toward adult readers interested in tragic romances and realistic, character-driven stories with a thought-provoking bent that don’t shy away from the seedy propensities of human interactions. While drawing from literary works like Dante’s Inferno, mythological stories like Hero and Leander and Orpheus’ descent to hell, and modern revenge tales like Brian Garfield’s Death Wish and Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, this work remains grounded in true-to-life human experience that hopes to challenge readers in confronting its heady themes. As an independently published author, I welcome readers who frequent such sites as Authors’ Lounge and many other platforms that are immensely beneficial to up-and-coming writers and those who have elected to pursue the self-publishing route.

Like most writers, my main hope is that readers will simply enjoy the story A Beautiful World tells. Its energetic and unrelenting prose, black humor, and uncompromising depictions of the physical and psychological effects of violence may not be an easy read for some, but the world it depicts is not necessarily an easy or forgiving one. I try to be responsible as a writer in selecting what goes into my work (“everything should carry some significance to the whole” kind of thing), and I hope readers will appreciate that and engage with the complex questions the plot and dialogue raise. For myself, writing the novel was in many ways a therapeutic exercise, as I wrestled with contemporary questions of cancel culture, how we as a society deal with violence against men and women, racial inequalities, the phenomenon of preferring what separates us to what unites us, and the reasons why we are sometimes so quick to judge others based on preconceptions and the consequences of doing so. At bottom, though, all I really wanted to do was tell a story about the very human desire of trying to find a place one can call home.

About the Author

A Beautiful World grew out of my many experiences as a young undergraduate, traveler, academic, and all-around guy who’s been accused of being too much in his own head. I was raised in New Jersey suburbs, worked as a wine and spirits salesperson in New York City, lived in Atlanta and Pennsylvania, attempted a walk across America (book about that forthcoming!), and received a doctorate in English Literature from the University of Michigan. These experiences drove me to tell stories that represent a wide diversity of characters from different backgrounds and beliefs. I’m not a perfect writer, but I’ve always known that I wanted to be one.   

A Beautiful World can be purchased in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover formats on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BCKPLF9H 

I value any and all feedback from writers and readers. I can be reached on Facebook under Lazarus Belle, or on Instagram: @lazarusbelleauthor.