Ria -

Cordwainer Smith

Jwindz Publishing

1987

242 páginas

8h 4m

ISBN-10: 0961891807

The central figure of this novel is an American girl who has been educated in Japan and Germany, the attractive, bright, and intense fifteen-year-old Ria. Most of the action takes places in Bad Christi, Germany, when the girl finds herself caught up in a curious pattern of behavior that is often beyond her understanding as well as out of her control. Surrounded by a group of vivid and unusual characters, and compelled to action by circumstances as real as they are peculiar, Ria plays her odd part in enacting a drama of 'sex plus time plus space.'

Quite as strange as the central figure are the other characters in the story: the young and fantastic German intellectual, the exiled ancient Russian prince, the broken-down English madam, the lovely blond Swedish girl, Ria's helpful and irrepressible mother, and half a dozen others, including the magnificent golden cat, Sardanapal.

Ria, is a story of human growth and introspection. A story of humanity that cuts across cultural boundaries by finding and exploring the threads of human experience that are common to all. And, like Smith's later tales of a far future universe, Ria is a story that cannot be told in the here and now. It is a story that can only be told as it is remembered; through the obscuring mists of time and memory.