Lunch with God

About the Book

Standing at the corner of a busy intersection in downtown Rio de Janeiro. 

A typical day for Atala, thoughts racing with the speed of his metropolitan environment. 

The heat is sweltering, air thick and the worries weighing him down.  A moment any responsible human being is all to familiar with. 

Suddenly an awkward looking man joins him at his side.  Once the signal turns our adventure begins...

Lunch with God is a personal account that takes us through a transformation.  It evokes the magic powers settled within each and every one of us, desperately wanting to be awakened and put to use. 

Time in this story is portrayed as an object of our dismay, and the only way to accept our magic powers is to understand time away from a mere measurement. 

Our magic powers depend on this new concept of time and everything in this universe. 

We are all connected, existing interdependently with one another. 

Atala emphasizes this order. 

Lunch with God is an invitation for all who dare to see our universe as a simple miracle.

About the Author

ATALA-ATALA is, before anything else, a traveler. Born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela in 1952 from a Mexican father and a Lebanese mother, Atala is the youngest of four. During early childhood they moved to Fortaleza, in the Brazilian state Ceará. Next they moved to Carangola, in the state of Minas Gerais, where he spent the majority of his childhood. In 1965 Atala relocated to Rio de Janeiro, where he pursued his studies and developed a career in architecture. He graduated from the University of Architecture and Urbanism of the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro in 1976. Still hungry for another relocation, Atala set out to Berkeley, California in 1980 to study Urbanism at the University of California, Berkeley. Besides traveling to these corners of the world he traveled to other dimensions only dreamt about by many throughout history.

Lunch with God relates an experience that began in Fortaleza during Atala’s eighth birthday and later confirmed in Carangola, where the initial contact with his "friend" was made. This was on the night of his twelfth birthday. It was a gift that illuminated his entire life forever.

Written in three dimensions of time, the story simultaneously interweaves a dialogue over lunch with revealing memories, and real life as the story is being written. It leads and entangles the reader with interest, leaving one to become undone with the primordial question: "Atala, is it true you had lunch with God?"

Without any literary pretense or maudlin language, the book captivates the reader, instilling curiosity that can only be quenched by the second part of this story, 1600 Days, which is not published yet.

Atala, who always loves to travel, is now traveling with words to visit other worlds containing magical forces and urban miracles. There are new books on the way that he wrote attempting to deconstruct certainties regarding the factor of time as a mere chronological reference, and that it is possible to be dribbled.

What we learn from Atala-Atala Mansour is present in this quote by Einstein: "Do not walk along traced routes. They lead only to where others have already been."