After teaching German Literature at Stanford University, Queens College, New York, and Rochester Institute of Technology, and publishing a book on Thomas Mann, Salvation in the Secular (Herbert Lang Verlag, Bern), Elaine Sutherland left academics and began writing fiction.
In the world of the Internet, she discovered a public hungry for 'fan fiction' adventure based on characters already in film and on television. After gaining attention with "Wanting Melosa," an Amazon love story, and "Women in Prison," a deliciously smutty parody of prison movies of the 1950's, she gained a substantial readership with her most romantic story, "Lao Ma's Kiss". She is best known, however, for her two-part series, "The Pappas Journals" and "In the Reich" which tell the harrowing story of two women archeologists working in Europe during WWII.
Her first long fictional work currently in the hands of an agent is Sistine Faces, a historical novel which proposes a dangerous circle of friends for Michelangelo and scandalous inspirations for his great ceiling.
A second and more lighthearted undertaking is a desert trilogy. The Hundredth Generation, while primarily an adventure story, complete with mummies, temples and camel chases, also examines theological issues. In a world torn between fundamentalist dogma on the one side and godless consumerism on the other, the novel plays with the idea that ancient Egyptian animism might offer a solution. Its sequels, The Vulture's Kiss and Neferenepet continue the adventure with some grim confrontations, in this world and the next.
The author's preoccupation with Arab and Egyptian culture arises from her several research trips to Egypt with her Egyptologist partner. She is at home both in New York and Brussels and travels, whenever possible, to the Middle East.
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