A historical fantasy offers a wry commentary on religious belief
On his death in 2011, The Times described Russell Hoban as 'perhaps
the most consistently strange writer of the late 20th century'. He
thought and wrote in an extraordinary range of genres, becoming
first a bestselling writer of children's books, particularly the
immortal Frances stories and his first novel, The Mouse and His
Child (1968). After its publication he continued to write for
children (most notably perhaps the Captain Najork books with
Quentin Blake and The Marzipan Pig), but focussed most of his
energies on a sequence of wonderful novels, which began with The
Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz (1973) and ended with Angelica
Lost and Found (2010). He also wrote the libretto for Harrison
Birtwistle's opera The Second Mrs Kong (1994).
His novels were wildly various, but share his obsession with
objects, animals, specific works of art and pieces of music, his
love of words and sense of humour. Penguin Modern Classics
publishes his first eight novels- The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and
Jachin-Boaz, Kleinzeit, Turtle Diary, Riddley Walker, Pilgermann,
The Medusa Frequency, Fremder and Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer.
Superb ... Pilgermann is history, metaphysics, a tangle of
mysteries, profound and simple.
*The Guardian*
The world according to Pilgermann is a brutish place borrowing from
Hieronymus Bosch's grotesque depictions of hell and the literary
traditions of pilgrimage narrative, allegory and the historical
novel. It is a novel of ideas... sophisticated and demanding.
*New York Times Book Review*
A strange and beautiful work, whose mysteries are worth
contemplation. Hoban's prose is constantly persuasive. Pilgermann
is that rare thing - a novel that can be read with profit more than
once.
*Evening Standard*
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