The Imprisoned Splendor

Kiran is a gifted but self-absorbed college professor who grew up in Mumbai. Now working at a leading California university as a professional philosopher, he lives in a marriage of convenience to Lisa, an American, but this comes to an abrupt end on a visit home to India when he dies in a plane crash.

Kiran watches annihilation advance toward him, then the moment of death. To his amazement he finds he's still alive--more alive than ever. Under the guidance of his grandparents, he gradually gets used to his ethereal body and the strange laws, landscapes, cities, and fellow inhabitants of Eidos, a spirit world. But he's not at home there; he's not ready to enjoy it. He undergoes Judgment (but not by a deity) by reliving the events of his selfish life from the point of view of his victims--his students, his fellow workers, above all the women who loved him. Eventually he seeks out Shalini, who committed suicide after he rejected her in favor of her rival, Lisa.

Kiran, facing heavy odds, is assigned the task of rescuing Shalini from her self-made hell in the Shadowlands. Will he succeed -- and if he does, what then? He can't stay where he is. He must move ahead into diviner worlds or "repeat the grade." And what about Shalini? Where will her passion for Kiran take her next?

Stafford Betty is a university professor and an afterlife researcher. He doesn't regard this novel as fantasy fiction. It grew out of his nonfiction book, "The Afterlife Unveiled," published a few months earlier. He believes that our own experiences in the afterworld will be something like Kiran's. "The Imprisoned Splendor" will suggest what probably lies ahead for all of us and entertain you in the process.

This is his fourth novel, the previous one published by Penguin. "The Imprisoned Splendor" is a corrective to pessimistic novels like Camus' "The Stranger." The message here is positive and important.