Little Lazarus

Little Lazarus is a story of star-crossed lovers separated by a fateful accident tied together by two turtles’ prophecies.

Teenagers Francois and Eleanor are lonely and wild in the small Southern town of Harmony that promises them nothing but more of the same: nothing. They attempt to escape their humdrum existence and dysfunctional families, but succeed only in finding each other. And that seems to be enough. Until one drunken night driving down a country road changes the course of their lives.

As Francois and Eleanor tell their stories in parallel sections, another larger story unfolds, told through the lives of two tortoises, Lazarus and Little Lazarus, who bear witness to centuries of happiness and heartbreak. Their respective journeys across continents constitute a tour of the human heart itself in all its manifestations. Their caretakers range from a billionaire intent on achieving immortality, to a series of mute men passing down the same seersucker suit through generations, to a dog named Pony at the end of the world.

With the lyrical wisdom and heart of Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers and the stylistic audacity of Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World, NYC writer Michael Bible proves why he’s a cult sensation to Italian readers. Little Lazarus mesmerizes with a moving ode to unfaithful memory and lost time, leaving readers a broken shell of their former selves.

Michael Bible is originally from North Carolina. His work has appeared in The Paris Review and Oxford American, among other places. He lives in New York.