THE IMMORTALISTS

Out of today's headlines, The Immortalists is a cutting edge novel that sends up the life extension movement in all its pretentiousness. Joe Forcione is determined to defeat death. With his vast financial resources and sheer will, he sets out to embrace scientific and mystical possibilities to defy the unenviable fate of all human beings. In the process, he becomes entangled in erotic adventures with beguiling and strong women who lead him to an understanding of the limits of his masculinity and realization that femininity, in all its mysteries, somehow holds the key to human transformation. In fact, he is actually transformed into a woman by mistake, leading to catastrophic consequences, before he is returned to his masculine state. Torn between his wife and his mistress, a Swedish massage therapist, both of whom he impregnates, he plunges into his pursuit of immortality. His encounters with a priest with healing powers, shamans and charlatans, a physician (Dr. Kleist) with arcane medical capabilities to reverse the aging process, and a mad Korean computer scientist, Dr. Duck, capable of replicating human life in the form of virtual reality, propel him into a dizzying Swiftian voyage of life and death from the Hamptons to Zurich, across several continents, as the secrets of life and death are revealed to him.