If Richard here dreams backward, the novel also dreams forward, in a similar gesture of utopian erasure.
Set in the Danish court in the 1770's, this fact-based yarn by a veteran Swedish novelist and playwright tells of how the German physician to the young king becomes Denmark's de facto ruler, and of how the idealistic doctor's affair with the queen dashes his dream of transforming the backward kingdom into a land of liberté, égalité et fraternité.
And, in his most famous short story, "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," the poet himself moves backward in time, dreaming he is in a movie theatre watching a silent film of his parents' courtship at Coney Island years before.
It's impossible not to see in these pages an homage to another magic realist, Gabriel García Márquez, and his benighted inventor, José Arcadio Buendía, who dreams of transforming the backward mountain village of Macondo into a model of progress.
Who had ever dreamed of eating pizza backward?
Heads around me tipped backward, snoring, dreaming while I imagined Mahoor and the millions of vulnerable immigrant kids and their families worrying about what will happen to them today, tomorrow.
While this sounds like a boon to some, it marks a distinct step backward for the dream of an all-touch Windows machine.
Our 21-year-old interpreter, who had taken to wearing a baseball cap backward, recited youthful dreams of visits to America, to New York, where he could leave behind the life in a country he despised.
Florence and Rome looked backward toward the golden dream of antiquity and upward into a celestial geography.
Carl Watson, 47, a City College student, said he was grateful that Ms. Solomon published his short story "Backward the Drowned Went Dreaming".
