Carnal Sacraments: A Historical Novel of the Future - Softcover

Perry Brass

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1892149184 ISBN 13: 9781892149183

Publisher: Belhue Press, 2014

Synopsis

What happens when you re caught in the cross hairs of an all-seeing international government corporation? A perfect narrative for the age of Edward Snowden. "Layered with philosophical elements, fascinating descriptions, and a clear focus on character overall, Brass's . . . work is one of the most unusual novels I've read in years," Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco.

"I would definitely recommend this book to readers who get tired of reading erotic homosexual stories, and would like to try this sensual book," Journal of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society.

Perry Brass has created a page-turning thriller that takes the reader on one helluva roller coaster ride, and oh, the places you ll go!" White Crane Journal. "Unusual and unpredictable," Mandate Magazine.

A white-knuckle suspense story set in the year 2075, the distant yet close-enough future, when constant corporate + government surveillance is Standard Operating Procedure. Endless war and endless security punch their way through individual lives. And your job level will determine exactly if and how you live and die.

In a glittering city in a very internationalized Germany, Jeffrey Cooper, Alabama-born design star, has made a pact with the Devil himself. No matter what age he is, the mega-Corporation running the world will keep him looking movie-star young and handsome. Cooper has left his past, his history and heart behind. But they will catch up with him when he meets a handsome young Dutchman who offers him his real soul back but with even a higher price than the Corporation is making him pay.

A perfect tale for the currrent age of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency, and a world business culture in which many gay men have taken key roles and given up so much of themselves in return. Carnal Sacraments is a book you won t put down until the very end.

This 2nd Edition edition features an arresting new cover with a painting by German Symbolist painter Sascha Schneider, a Foreword by the author, as well as a biographical note on Sascha Schneider, a long-lost gay artist from the more sexually-liberated German twilight between world wars.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

No one would know his real age. Or how he felt inside. Or what he had to do to stay the way he was. In the last quarter of the 21st cen-tury, Jeffrey Cooper, an Alabama-raised, executive design star living in Americanized Germany, has made a Faustian pact with the huge global economic system running the world. The system will keep him young and razor-sharp, as long as he can stay on top of do his job and keep profits high. But stress from work and the congested, hyper-competitive life around him is killing Jeffrey. Can he keep his stress level a secret from the system itself, his co-workers, and even his own seductive, very “daddyish” German therapist who has told him that when all else fails, there are “angels” who can save him, and often we don't know who they are? But one will appear in Jeffrey's life. At first, he seems to be the Devil himself, offering every kind of excitement, even offering Jeffrey back his own lost soul—but will this younger, mysterious and attractive man end up killing Jeffrey, or saving him? In Carnal Sacraments, Perry Brass has created a parable of our time and the future, of an emerging international business culture based on war, and of intense sexuality as a key to religious experience and personal salvation. Author of The Harvest, Warlock, and Angel Lust, Perry Brass continues his exploration of the joining of sexuality, consciousness, and spirituality in this very poignant and mature novel.

About the Author:

Originally from Savannah, GA, Perry Brass has published 17 books, been a finalist 6 times for Lambda Literary Awards, a finalist for the prestigious Ferro-Grumley Fiction Award from the Ferro-GrumleyFoundation, has won 4 Ippy Awards from Independent Publisher, appears in more than 30 anthologies of poetry, short fiction, essays, and critical studies, and has sold close to 100,000 copies of his work in all media.

He has been involved in the lgbt movement since 1969, when he co-edited Come Out!, the world's first gay liberation newspaper. In 1972, with two friends he started the Gay Men's Health Project Clinic, the first clinic for gay men on the East Coast, still operating as New York s Callen-Lorde Clinic. As a poet, he has had 70 poems set to music by numerous composers and his collaborations have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and all over Europe and in Asia. He has also been featured in the films All the Way Through Evening, directed by Australian director Rohan Spong about young composers who died of AIDS; Out in the City, produced by New York and Company, directed by George Hickenlooper, and Fierté Gay, a groundbreaking documentary from Belgian television about the international gay movement, directed by Sylvain deMille.

Brass's work often deals with that intersection of sexuality, spirituality and personal politics that came out of his involvement with the radical queer politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This intersection was deemed impossible by many academics and even gay activists of the early years of the movement, who could accept one but none of the other elements now making up social change.

Currently a coordinator of the Rainbow Book Fair, the first LGBT book fair in the U.S., his newest book is King of Angels, A Novel About the Genesis of Identity and Belief, set in Savannah in 1963, the period of John F. Kennedy s assassination, civil rights turmoil, and the appearance of a genuine gay community with an authentic outsider viewpoint.

About this edition

• Publisher: Belhue Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1892149184
• ISBN 13: 9781892149183
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 301