Lear: The Shakespeare Company Plays Lear at Babylon - Softcover

Johnson, Mike

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0994101503 ISBN 13: 9780994101501

Verlag: 99% Press, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

A plague driven band of vagabonds and beggars, calling themselves The Shakespeare Company, arrive at the decaying little town of Babylon, where they perform King Lear in a whirl of mayhem and madness. As the night proceeds, they spin out of control, embodied by their roles. Narrated by the girl Curan, a minor character, this novel is part black comedy, part tragedy, part carnival, and implicitly dystopian. It is a bizarre and disturbing novel of a plague society in social and moray decay. A novel that challenges the reader at every turn. Erotic, eerie and disturbing, Johnson's novel reinvents the emotional dynamic of Shakespeare's play, as in a distorted mirror. It does not, however, require knowledge of the play to work it's magic as a piece of fiction. ‘Johnson makes an original contribution to the literature of disaster, and certainly to the nation's literature that still struggles beneath the mantle of social realism; he does it by the sheer intensity of his poetic vision, combined with an adroit meta-fictional sense... In this fallen world, does falling matter? Johnson’s novel is an exuberant, artful meditation on this question…' David Dowling, Landfall. ‘He has achieved a kind of ‘worldmaking’ that confirms his position as one of New Zealand’s most important fiction writers.’ Jody Dalgleish, on the novel Travesty, Landfall. ‘One of the most innovative, original and fearless writers I know.’ Witi Ihimaera, on the novel Stench.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mike Johnson, fiction writer and poet, is widely regarded as one of New Zealand's most innovative writers. He lives on Waiheke Island and has taught creative writing at AUT University and the University of Auckland. In 2002 he received The University of Auckland's Literary Fellowship, having been Literary Fellow at Canterbury University in 1987. His first novel, Lear, the Shakespeare Company Plays Lear at Babylon was short listed for the New Zealand Book Awards in 1986, his novel Dumb Show won the Buckland Memorial Award for Literary Excellence in 1995, and he won the Frances Kean Award his short story, 'Magic Strings' in 1999. His first book of poetry, The Palanquin Ropes, (1983) was co-winner of the John Cowie Reed Memorial Competition. His non-fiction, Angel of Compassion, was shortlisted for the Ashton Whyle Award in 2014, and a poem from Vertical Harp, The selected poems of Li He (2006) has been anthologised in the Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page (Random House, 2015). Mike Johnson is the author of twenty-six books including nine books of poetry, three of shorter fiction, one non fiction, three children's books, and ten novels.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: 99% Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0994101503
• ISBN 13: 9780994101501
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 218
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland