Gore Vidal - KALKI

Who is Kalki, and why is he planning to destroy the world -- and everything in it? And if Kalki is a mystical legend, then why does his ultimate world include only a select few chosen to breed a new human race?

Paperback...286 pages...read with care!

Review by A Customer at http://www.amazon.com/Kalki-Gore-Vidal/dp/0345278739

This is scary, devillish and brilliant stuff. I am writing this review about two hours after finishing Kalki. I' d love to delete the experience from my memory so I could do so again. The premise is that a bisexual writer and aviatrix named Teddy Ottinger is given the chance of the ultimate scoop. A former Vietnam vet named Jimmy Kelly has announced he is the AVATAR (incarnation) of Kalki. He is holed up in an ashram in Nepal. The end of the world is nigh. Meanwhile, his retinue of deluded bourgeois American youth is handing out white lotuses on the nation's streets. Teddy must fly with him like her heroine Amelia Erhart and scoop the rival networks. The powers that be suspect a drug-ring. Those who know of Hinduism know Kalki as the tenth and final incarnation of the great Vishnu, sacred 33% of the "Trimurti", also including Brahma and Shiva. Mr Kelly proves to be a worthy Messiah. The book keeps you turning the pages. The end is utterly convincing. Real grist to to the mill in that eternal debate. Are we here because some Preserver-Destroyer-Creator being wills it, now and forever? Are we here because a few eons back, some monkeys (Jack and Jill?) threw a bone in the air and never looked back?