Wide Illumination Chapter 8 read by the author Tom Rubens
This work is a Contemporary Literature about a young student finding his first love affair
Set in the mid-1960s, this second novel in the 'Illumination' trilogy shows its
central character, Richard Lane, studying at university, and fostering intellectual
friendships with some of his fellow male students. Also, during his first long summer
vacation, he visits Germany and meets a young German woman, Helga, with whom he
comes to share a deep and intimate understanding, as well as sexual pleasure. This sharing
is presented as especially interesting because, happening only two decades after the end of
World War Two, it shows the ability of young people, with their eager openness to
experience, to bridge different national and cultural backgrounds. Finally, the text moves
beyond Richard's university days to the world of work, and his first encounters in yet
another Continental country, Portugal, where a good deal of the final book in the trilogy will be set in.
About the Author Tom Rubens
While a great deal of my energy has gone into teaching English Language and
Literature in further and higher education, I have remained continually interested in those
areas of private life which, for myself and of course for every other working person, lie
outside the pursuit of a professional career when that itself is not one of authorship. The
private terrain is, I have found, the most complex, so the most difficult to illuminate: and is
therefore the prime subject for personal writing, in whatever form that writing takes. For
me, the forms have been literature (fiction, poetry) and philosophy. The trilogy of novel I
have produced, of which Wide Illumination is the second text, indicate what I see as the
close linkage between literature and philosophy—with each focus, as it seeks to plumb the
depths, being supported by the other. This linkage becomes increasingly evident as Wide
Illumination proceeds on its way.
https://www.amazon.com/Wide-Illumination-university-Students-encounters/dp/1912951339
Available in Kindle and Softback
