Island of the World: A Novel

by Michael D. O'Brien

One does not need to recreate the cosmos or to fix it, but I can choose to love, despite everything. This is currency. Only God frees me to choose this because, without him, I would slide into the condition of the killers, the beast-men of Goli Otok. I am no better than they are. All men, without Christ, are capable of becoming Cain—though everyone would deny it.

Individual destiny is not produced machine-like from the “mills of the gods”. Nor are we characters in a morality play. We are works of art, each work distinct, each a phenomenon, the art laboring hand in hand with the Artist to create the story. We are inside a poem. No, we are the poem.

“These honors that you give to me are not for me alone. They are for those who, dying young, now sleep in the earth with their unspoken poems, waiting for the Last Day.”