Philip Louis Gissen

Books were integral to my survival as a child. With my nose buried in pages, the dysfunction melted away. Literature was a safe place in a world that wasn’t. Favorites emerged, William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy, Hannah Green’s I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, and, of course, A Separate Peace and The Catcher in the Rye. 

As I aged, William Goldman’s Temple of Gold, and Pierre Bezukhov, a character from War and Peace, brought me solace and less alienation.

Later, the great espionage novels of John Le Carré, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, William Boyd, and the dark mysteries by Tana French, Jo Nesbø, Jussi Adler-Olsen, and Håkan Nesser kept life at bay for a moment. 

Writing came later, during the space left by my retirement from teaching. Lost, alone, living in cities where I was a “stranger in a strange land,” I grasped at anything to keep my head above the ice. My character and soul mate, Irving Goldstein, emerged from behind this dark curtain and threw me a life raft. 

Without any preamble or clarification, Solitary Citadel was born, the plot and characters developing in my mind so quickly that I often didn’t have time to get it typed or written down. While its birth dropped with the speed of Usain Bolt, the writing took decades, as I agonized over every word and phrase. My research was exhaustive, and I tried to base my depictions of Solitary Citadel and its sequel, Alienated Sanctum, on facts. Even the most preposterous is based on fact. 

The final manuscript was massive—more than 1,500 pages—which was whittled down to two books. I can now see the finish line on September 15th. Please enjoy Solitary Citadel, and know it was written from my heart and soul.