The Story of My Disappearance Book

Paul Watkins's sixth novel is about an East German soldier and spy named Paul Wedekind. He becomes an American fisherman called Paul Watkins, has some exciting and deadly adventures at sea when a man he betrayed and thought he killed in Afghanistan surfaces in Rhode Island, and winds up in Mexico, writing this book "with a pencil on cheap gray-white notepads", the only paper he can find. The Story of My Disappearance ends with this note: "The author would like to thank Professor Hector Morales of the Coba Archaeological Facility, Coba, Quintana Roo, Mexico, for his help in forwarding this manuscript to the publishers." Does this mean that the story is true--that the "Paul Watkins" in the novel is really the author--and that it came in over the transom and not through his agent? Don't let these questions spoil the pleasure of Watkins's precise prose as he sets out to cross Hemingway with Kafka, tossing in large chunks of Joseph Conrad in the bargain. --Dick AdlerRead More