The Sign of Jonah

Rich with symbolism and filled with historical and philosophical references, van Leeuwen's short novel uses the fluidity of dream and fable in an attempt to jury-rig an accommodation between the Old (European) and the New (colonial) worlds. Told by an elderly curmudgeon known as ``the professor,'' events are set primarily in Willemstad, the vibrant and culturally diverse Caribbean port capital of Cura ao, a Dutch-speaking island of the Netherlands Antilles. The narrative is disjointed, but that seems to be appropriate for the professor, an idealistic alcoholic who is haunted by death and pontificates on issues ranging from power-hungry Latin American dictators to the beauty of Barbra Streisand. The professor rescues a fabulously wealthy businessman, Juan Carlos de Altamario, who in return invites the narrator onto his yacht and, from there, to his surreal estate on the fictional island of Balboa. In this fantasy section, the professor tours the magical island and meets its inhabitants, who include Leo Tolstoy, Nazi war criminals and priapic dwarves. Eventually, he has a falling out with Carlos and returns to Cura ao, where he celebrates with the island's poor and spends a night in jail. Van Leeuwen throws every mythic trope he can think of into this rijsttafel of a novel, from the biblical horsemen of the apocalypse to the great white whale of Moby-Dick. But he mixes it all up with such evident gusto that it doesn't, in the end, matter how much articulated sense he makes: for the book is animated less by the Old World's need to impose order than by the New World's desire for a carnival. (Nov.)