Babel Tower - Hardcover

A.S. Byatt

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679405135 ISBN 13: 9780679405139

Publisher: Random House, 1996

Synopsis

The Booker Prize-winning author of Possession presents a stunning, contemporary story set against the clashing politics, passionate ideals, and shifting sexual roles of the early 1960s. In Byatt's vision, the presiding genius of the day seems to be a blend of the Marquis de Sade and The Hobbit. Peopled with weird and colorful characters, charted with brilliant, imaginative sympathy, Babel Tower is as comic as it is threatening and bizarre.

About this title

Review:

Babel Tower follows The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life in tracing Frederica Potter, a lover of books who reflects the author's life and times. It centers around two lawsuits: in one, Frederica -- a young intellectual who has married outside her social set -- is challenging her wealthy and violent husband for custody of their child; in the other, an unkempt but charismatic rebel is charged with having written an obscene book, a novel-within-a-novel about a small band of revolutionaries who attempt to set up an ideal community. And in the background, rebellion gains a major toehold in the London of the Sixties, and society will never be the same.

From the Publisher:

"An overwhelming literary experience ... rich and often exhilarating."
-- Washington Post Book World

"Byatt is critical yet empathetic, universal yet specific, emotionally direct yet intellectually playful ... A great, big sweep of a story."
-- Miami Herald

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0679405135
• ISBN 13: 9780679405139
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 623