Publishers Weekly is reporting that David J. Halperin sold Journal of a UFO Investigator to Kendra Harpster at Viking, via agent Peter Steinberg of The Steinberg Agency. Viking expects to publish in early 2011. Subagent Intercontinental Literary Agency has already sold translation rights in Germany and Italy, and is negotiating a deal in Spain. PW notes the book is generating a lot of interest since”it straddles the adult-YA line.”
The book is “structured like The Wizard of Oz and influenced by the work of Philip K. Dick, Philip Pullman, and Madeleine L’Engle, the book tells the story of a 1960s teenager whose mother is slowly dying. He keeps himself sane by spinning a story in which he duels with the embodiments of death, unravels the mysteries of time and existence, and becomes lover to the most desirable girl he can imagine, all in a world in which nothing happens that is not conspiracy. Eventually, the boy descends into the nether-world and emerges transformed. Much of the UFO content in the book is based on factual lore.”
Halperin is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He studied at Cornell University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before receiving his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1977. He is the author of several nonfiction books on theology and mythology, including The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature (1980), The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision (1988), Seeking Ezekiel: Text and Psychology (1993), and Abraham Miguel Cardozo: Selected Writings (2001). Journal of a UFO Investigator is his first novel.