About The Dreamtime

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Lost Paradise by Cees Nooteboom

Lost Paradise

A Novel

by Cees Nooteboom
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • First Published:
  • Oct 10, 2007, 208 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Nov 2008, 160 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

About The Dreamtime

This article relates to Lost Paradise

Print Review

In Lost Paradise, Nooteboom introduces us to Alma and Almut, best friends barely out of teenagehood, as they leave their childhood homes in Sao Paulo, Brazil for Australia. They're on a rather listless quest in search of The Dreamtime, an Aboriginal concept of creation and spiritual existence with which the two best friends have become enamored and obsessed. The psychological and spiritual experience of The Dreamtime is notoriously impossible to explain to those outside the secretive Aboriginal culture, but the basis for the belief is well documented.

Considered by some to be the longest continuous culture on earth, the Aborigines are the descendents of the first known human inhabitants of Australia. Divided into over 500 tribal groups with about half as many languages and countless dialects within them, they share a common belief system based on what translates to "The Dreamtime" or "The Dreaming".

The Dreamtime refers at once to a creation story, the ancient time of creation, and a parallel spiritual cycle that infuses all life, and is experienced as a confluence of past, present and future. In the creation story, giant beings, interchangeably human and animal, rose from the then-desolate Australian continent, and in their travels created mountain ranges, rivers, hills, plains, and other formations. Exhausted by their work, they sank back into the earth, and their resting places became sites of great spiritual importance, to which all ceremonies and rites are tied.

The bonds with the mythical beings of the Dreamtime are such that Aborigines believe in a united world of body and spirit for every form of life in the land, both living and non-living. This makes the land formations more than just symbols of creation, but rather a reality and eternal truth of the laws set forth by the mythical beings of The Dreamtime. The Aboriginal belief in reincarnation completes a circular cycle back to their ancestors of The Dreamtime.

An individual person's Dreaming is a combination of sacred sites, the sacred stories connected with those sites, and the rituals that honor them. Each person has a totem that connects them to their ancestral beings and their land, which may take the form of animal, reptile, bird, or plant, and shapes their personal connection to The Dreaming, in the physical, spiritual, past, present, and future.

Interesting Links

Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities

Article by Lucia Silva

This "beyond the book article" relates to Lost Paradise. It originally ran in November 2007 and has been updated for the November 2008 paperback edition. Go to magazine.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    Death at the Sign of the Rook
    by Kate Atkinson
    Jackson Brodie returns in a gripping new mystery! Welcome to Rook Hall. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Too Old for This
    by Samantha Downing

    A retired killer's secret is at risk when a visitor arrives—her only option? Another murder.

  • Book Jacket

    The Magician of Tiger Castle
    by Louis Sachar

    The author of Holes returns with a magical adult debut about forbidden love and a kingdom on the brink of collapse.

  • Book Jacket

    This Here Is Love
    by Princess Joy L. Perry

    Three people—two enslaved, one indentured—struggle to overcome the limits and labels of their painful shared pasts.

  • Book Jacket

    A Club of One's Own
    by BookBrowse

    Dreaming of starting or reviving a book club? A Club of One’s Own is the essential guide to doing it right.

Win This Book
Win All the Men I've Loved Again

All the Men I've Loved Again by Christine Pride

Christine Pride's solo debut explores a woman's love triangle in her 20s that unexpectedly resurfaces in her 40s.

Enter

Book
Trivia

  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

I N R S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.