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Before turning to fiction, Richard divided his time between academia (in Australia, the USA, and South Africa) and urban policy consulting across Southern Africa.
As an ACADEMIC, either in full-time or visiting capacity, he has been located in Australia at the University of Melbourne (Chair of the Urban Planning Program); in South Africa at the University of the Witwatersrand; and in the USA at Columbia and New School Universities and MIT, and in think tanks at the Brookings Institution and the Wilson Center; and at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy. A Fulbright Scholar, he completed his PhD at Rutgers University.
As a post-1990 CONSULTANT his clients in Southern Africa included the post-apartheid South African government, various local and international NGOs, the World Bank, USAID, the private sector; during which time he facilitated multi-party negotiations. He also worked with community organizations.
FIRST VIOLIN is a serious novel. It required a couple of years of research, including valuable periods at the Library of Congress and the Holocaust Museum, and time in Vienna, a wonderful city. The novel is set in Vienna and a Mauthausen subcamp from just before the 1938 Anschluss to the Soviet-controlled period of 1945. The story follows Klaus, a violinist and Mischling of the second degree, and those close to him—his wife Helga, his lover Eva, his friend Johann, his adoring daughter Ilse, and his mother Rosa—as they navigate daily life under the Nazis and, later, under Soviet occupation. Through music, personal compromise, and quiet resistance, they survive, except that Helga's experiences scar her "recovery". During the war, Johann joins the Nazi Party to keep his business. After the war Klaus is co-opted by the Soviets for propaganda performances. The novel balances historical events—Hitler’s Heldenplatz speech, the 1934 uprising, two pogroms, the bombing of Vienna—with private struggles and moral ambiguity. Music is central: it sustains Klaus in the camp and shapes his return to Vienna. A Jewish identity emerges as a key theme in the narrative.
THE BOLOGNA MIRACLES 1498: FAITH AND PHYSICS IN RENAISSANCE ITALY is unserious. De Biaggi, a brilliant physicist whose breakthrough regarding time travel is mocked by academic colleagues and, due to his religious zeal, laugh that he seeks to visit Jesus. He is advised to ensure that his vaccinations are up to date lest he need a miracle. De Biaggi decides to return to Bologna at the time of his grandmother, 1937, and to make profound breakthroughs that he can attribute to divine inspiration. He arrives in 1498. His breakthroughs require, at the very least, an understanding of Einstein. His scheme fails. Christ and physics remain disunited. Unforeseen, the tech he has brought with him enables him to perform seeming miracles. Under the direction of Cardinal della Rovere (soon to become Pope Julius II), Bishop Richter, Copernicus, Da Vinci and Michelangelo certify that miracles are occurring. Cardinal della Rovere and Copernicus secure DeBiaggi a position at the University of Bologna. All is not lost.
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