Robert Shep­pard is the author of the acclaimed dual nov­el Spir­i­tus Mun­di, in two parts, Spir­i­tus Mun­di the Nov­el, Book I and Spir­i­tus Mun­di the Romance, Book II. The acclaimed “glob­al nov­el” fea­tures espi­onage-ter­ror-polit­i­cal-reli­gious thriller-action criss-cross­ing the globe involv­ing MI6. the CIA and Chi­nese MSS Intel­li­gence  as well as a “Peo­ple Pow­er” cam­paign to estab­lish a Unit­ed Nations Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly on the mod­el of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, with action mov­ing from Bei­jing to Lon­don to Wash­ing­ton, Mex­i­co City and Jerusalem while pre­sent­ing a vast panora­ma of the con­tem­po­rary inter­na­tion­al world, includ­ing com­pelling action and sur­re­al adven­tures. It also con­tains the unfold­ing sex­u­al, roman­tic and fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships of many of its prin­ci­pal and sec­ondary char­ac­ters, and a sig­nif­i­cant dimen­sion of spir­i­tu­al search­ing through “The Vari­eties of Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence.”  It con­tains also sig­nif­i­cant dis­cus­sions of World Lit­er­a­ture, includ­ing Chi­nese, Indi­an, West­ern and Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture, and like Joyce’s Ulysses, it incor­po­rates a vast array of styl­is­tic approach­es as the sto­ry unfolds.  Book II, Spir­i­tus Mun­di the Romance, dilates the set­ting, scope and con­tin­u­ing action as a Romance of fan­ta­sy adven­ture where the pro­tag­o­nists, still fol­low­ing the orig­i­nal action of Book I,  embark on a quest to the realms of Mid­dle Earth and its Crys­tal Bead Game in search of the Sil­mar­il Miss­ing Seed Crys­tal  and thence through a worm­hole to a “Coun­cil of the Immor­tals” in an Amphithe­ater in the cen­ter of the Milky Way Galaxy to plead for the con­tin­u­ance of the human race in the face of threat­ened extinc­tion from a nuclear World War III involv­ing the con­fronta­tion and mil­i­tary show­down between NATO, Chi­na, Rus­sia and Iran unfold­ed from the espi­onage events of Book I. The con­tem­po­rary epic cul­mi­nates with the first con­ven­ing of the Unit­ed Nations Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly, a world-scale ver­sion of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment installed as a new organ of the Unit­ed Nations.

 

Dr. Shep­pard present­ly serves as a Pro­fes­sor of Inter­na­tion­al Law and World Lit­er­a­ture at Peking Uni­ver­si­ty, North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty and the State Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Office (SIPO) of Chi­na, and has pre­vi­ous­ly served as a Pro­fes­sor of Inter­na­tion­al Law and  MBA pro­fes­sor at Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty, Ren­min People’s Uni­ver­si­ty, the Chi­na Uni­ver­si­ty of Pol­i­tics and Law  and at the Law Insti­tute of the Chi­nese Acad­e­my of Social Sci­ences (CASS) in Bei­jing, Chi­na. Hav­ing stud­ied Law, Com­par­a­tive Lit­er­a­ture and pol­i­tics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley (Ph. D.) Pro­gram in Com­par­a­tive Lit­er­a­ture), North­ridge, Tübin­gen, Hei­del­berg, the People’s Col­lege and San Fran­cis­co, (BA, MA, JD), he addi­tion­al­ly has been active as pro­fes­sor of Inter­na­tion­al Trade, Pri­vate Inter­na­tion­al Law, and Pub­lic Inter­na­tion­al Law from 1993 to 1998 at Xia­men Uni­ver­si­ty, Bei­jing For­eign Stud­ies Uni­ver­si­ty, the Chi­nese Acad­e­my of Social Sci­ences Grad­u­ate School (CASS), and the Chi­na Uni­ver­si­ty of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence and Law in Bei­jing. Since 2000 he has served as a Senior Con­sul­tant to the Unit­ed Nations Indus­tri­al Devel­op­ment Orga­ni­za­tion (UNIDO) in Bei­jing and has authored numer­ous papers on the demo­c­ra­t­ic reform of the Unit­ed Nations system.

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