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“I’ve just finished reading Matthys Levy’s amazing new novel, Building Eden, with tears in my eyes over the tragedies that affected so many people
during construction of a major building in Manhattan. Fortunately, it is fiction, and our experiences have been in no way similar. But only a person with extensive knowledge of the field could make this story so gripping, timely, and powerful.”
—Richard Meier
A gifted architect, Philip Corta, has the opportunity of a lifetime-the design of the Eden Center, a major office/residential complex on New York’s West Side. The project endures many setbacks brought on by an arrogant developer, corruption in City Hall, sabotage and murder by organized criminals, and recurring uncertainties about financing. Mafia-like figures try to sabotage the construction to profit from their “protection.” A single-minded architect, Philip Corta, finds aesthetic compromise difficult and backers financing the project create other obstacles for the project. Anxiety and doubt simmer and invade relationships including the architect and his wife, Diane. Nevertheless, construction proceeds more or less on schedule until . . . .
Matthys Levy is author or co-author of several other highly acclaimed books, including the classic Why Buildings Fall Down, but this is his first novel. Building Eden is a story of intrigue and suspense that he is uniquely qualified to write, thanks to a lifetime of experience in the structural design and construction of major buildings around the world. He knows the processes involved, and the dangers to avoid. Levy’s credits as structural designer include several New York landmarks: the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History, the Javits Convention Center, and the Marriott Marquis Hotel.
HEAT: A Tale of Love and Fear in a Climate-Changed World
Matthys Levy, Distinction Press, 202 pages. $19.95.
What used to be paradise is now a dying landscape.
Albert Drake is distraught as he describes the view outside his Miami window. It’s the middle of the 21st century, and the high-end retirement community he runs, his only source of income, is being destroyed by the climate crisis. He has moved all but eight residents to other communities far from the rising sea and “north of the heat zone.” But now a huge hurricane is building off the coast of Africa, and Drake must move the remaining seniors as quickly as possible.
Author Matthys Levy draws on decades of engineering and climate expertise to craft his second novel. For more than 60 years, Levy designed structures with New York City firm Weidlinger Associates (now Thornton Tomasetti), and in 2007 he published Why the Wind Blows: A History of Weather and Global Warming. His latest novel follows a group of people facing heartbreak and finding hope as scrubber satellites try to remove carbon from the upper atmosphere and millions flee uninhabitable homes.
—E.M.S.