Adam's Garden

The great tradition of Utopia is coming to an end. Researchers confirm not only the exhaustion of writers' taste for it but also the disappearance of the utopian frame of mind. Albeit from the beginning, as if the authors assumed that the transition from misery to perfection was hopelessly unattainable, they placed this coveted world outside human limits. Could it be that the assignment of utopias to a non-existent place was driven by the incompatibility of the vague image of a happy man with his instinctive (if flawed) desires? In other words, what if our desires are not as aligned with the world as we think, and what we allegedly wish for might not be what we actually need?

Now consider an image completely free from negative associations, context, or discourse, and you will inevitably envision a Garden. Its placement at the heart of the Primordial Myth of Creation established its association with purity while it was this inherent purity that assured such a placement. The Garden was the first, and only then came the Garden of Eden.

But the garden itself is as much a part of human life as its sorrowful aspects. To find it, one need not delve into the past nor wait for its appearance in the future; much less pull it from a nonexistent place of Utopia. Anyone who overcomes idle timidity and sheds the dishonorable, shallow, and depressing concept of himself can reach the garden.

The surroundings, events, and characters in the novel Adam's Garden portray such an attempt.