Last Love

“Let us make love as we make philosophy” is the theme of Plato’s revisionist final dialogue–the imaginative core of the novel. Plato’s Last Love transports the reader from today’s France and England to medieval Provence and Spain as well as ancient Greece of the fourth century, setting of the dialogue, The Erotic. The work has been lost for centuries but resurfaces in Provence and today’s world “like a submarine in mid-ocean,” creating a chain of events related to three spectacular love stories. The action involves the brilliant, amorous professor, Philip Platner, the stunning but love-shy doctoral candidate, Dora von Neubeck, the dynamic, ambitious lecturer Adele Mansfield, and special forces major Lawrence Hunter, who constitute a motley but undefeatable investigative team in search of the lost Plato manuscript. They tangle with dangerous criminal elements in the South of France as well as the shadowy head of a mysterious, fanatical monastic order. This tale–involving non-stop action, passion, medieval romance, and a philosophical dialogue with Plato, Aristotle, and Hippocrates, as well as a love potion and the bewitching philosophy student, Kyniska–beloved of Plato–unfolds at a swift pace and culminates in a magical hymn to love.