Richard Crasta, Author

After a 15-year period, during much of which I have been disconnected from great literature and art, I found myself been listening to Shakespeare. Not reading, but listening to a few of his monologues, thanks to You Tube. And I am awed by the greatness of such speeches as "There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow." Or: "Now is the winter of our discontent . . ." and poems such as "The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock." Shakespeare, Dickens, Joyce, Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eliot--so much greatness, such beauty--one sometimes wonders, is there any point in writing? Has it not all been written before? The answer: I write because I must. It may have been written before, but it is not my inner voice, and it's not the way I would write it, or have written it. Everything I have written has my personal stamp on it. It has my DNA all over it (which is why I don't think I am ever likely to be accused of plagiarism). Because, even ...

As a writer who puts his heart into his writing, I am delighted to be published in Latvia, and grateful to the people who found me and published me, in Latvia, in the Czech Republic (there was a second Czech publisher interested, but could not get my novel), and in countries such as Austria, Italy, Israel, and so on. I am even in correspondence with one of my Latvian readers, who found me on the Net. There are authors who give their books away for nothing, and there are other authors who do not even mind that they are pirated, so long as it means that they are being read, preferably by poor people who cannot afford to buy books. However, I don't think of modern Latvia as a particularly impoverished country, and doubt that my Latvian publishers, who profited from my book (and deserve to), are either that contemptuous of writers and ethics, or so poor that they have holes in their socks and just one pair of shoes.  So I would really appreciate it if they paid me what was fair and...

Assuming you're an adventurous, open-minded reader who hates following the herd, perhaps you may like a few recommendations from among my many books? Well, here goes: "Rife with inventive comic imagery as “A Confederacy of Dunces,” insightful, subtly searing as “Catcher in the Rye."--Amazon.com 5-star review The Revised Kama Sutra is, despite its name, about much, much more than sex; but if you prefer the portion of it that deals with childhood, then I suggest One Little Indian, which is much shorter, and in which the emphasis is much more on childhood and growing up . Shorter, and very different, is the next book, described as "hysterical" and "for the rebel in you" (equally funny, if you don't want the "parenting" parody, is The Empire Bites Back), on some platforms under the pseudonym "Benny Profane." The Empire Bites Back includes all the humor essays of the above, except for the wisecracking child; it is als...