The Limits of Vision - Softcover

Irwin, Robert

3.72

74 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140088865 ISBN 13: 9780140088861

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1987

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Obsessed with cleanliness, Marcia, a south London housewife, lives in a fantasy world visited by scientists and artists of the past

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About the Author:

Robert Irwin is one of the world’s leading Arabic scholars. He studied Modern history at Oxford and taught Medieval History at the University of St. Andrews. In addition to the novels The Arabian Nightmare, Limits of Vision, Exquisite Corpse, and Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh he is the editor of Night and Horses and the Desert: An Anthology of Classic Arabic Literature (Overlook hc, Vintage pb). All enjoyed critical and commercial success. He is also the author of several non-fiction works about Arabic and Middle Eastern literature and history and has lectured on these subjects at the universities of London, Cambridge and Oxford.

From Publishers Weekly:

If a world can be seen in a grain of sand, then surely phobia can be found in a handful of dust, or so contends obsessed British housewife Marcia, as she does endless battle with dandruff, the carapaces of roaches, grease, rust, grit, the whole panoply of household detritus. Terrorized by the imminent arrival of her coffee-morning ladies, she vacuums the carpet, only to be bested by the spirit Mucor, whose Latin name embodies all elements of slime and grime and who tries to entice her into the kingdom of filth over which he rules. To avoid him she enters the dazzling cleanliness of the Pieter de Hooch canvas hanging on her wall, invoking de Hooch and a raft of other geniusesDarwin, Teilhard de Chardin, Leonardo, Blake, Dostoyevski, even Jesusto assist her. The coffee-morning ladies arrive; she half-listens to their prattle while impatiently waiting for them to leave so she can attack the dishes they have dirtied. Soon her husband, whom she suspects of having an affair with one of the ladies, will come home; how can she defeat Mucor before that moment? The solution is in perfect harmony with this astonishing work of imagination and erudition by a former professor of medieval history.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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