Subtle Gravity

What is addiction? Who is an addict, and why? Are we only addicted to substances, or also to patterns of thought: self-loathing, doubt, obsessive thinking, and perhaps even silence? Subtle Gravity, like Praeg's first novel, Imitation, departs from the assumption that we are all addicts. We all struggle with being alone. Taking as a point of departure an extreme form of addiction – a commitment to the silence we know precedes the violence that language imposes on us – Subtle Gravity maps a possible way back from addiction through a playful engagement with Buddhism, Christian mysticism and, of course, Star Wars.

About the Author :
Leonhard Praeg is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He lives in Makhanda in the Eastern Cape, where he works as a freelance researcher, editor, writer and yoga nidra teacher.

Review :
'Subtle Gravity is a complex interplay between philosophy and fiction, at once a novel and philosophical meditation on the "self", and madness and hallucination in both Eastern and Western philosophies. In a subtle and compelling way, it delves into the political history of white South Africa, privilege and the political unconscious of Pretoria through a beguiling and whimsical interplay of texts, philosophies and films. The result is fascinating, wonderful, astute and masterly – and even better than the stunning and compelling Imitation.' — Joan Hambidge, Hofmeyr Chair for Afrikaans and Netherlandic Studies, University of Cape Town 'Subtle Gravity is a wonderful "novel of thought", which, through Praeg's vast intertextuality, extends our appreciation of how to think. In an ingenious melange of Buddhist notions of "rebirth" and Origen's doctrine of pre-existing souls that enter the world in search of redemption, characters are "reborn" into Subtle Gravity. One cannot fully escape the sense that Milan Kundera has been "reborn" in South Africa. It is a brilliant novel, even better than the excellent Imitation, and restores dignity to thinking in a way that only the novel can.'— Jason M. Wirth, Department of Philosophy, Seattle University, and author of Commiserating with Devastated Things: Milan Kundera and the Entitlements of Thinking