Judith: A novel - Hardcover

Mosley, Nicholas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0436288532 ISBN 13: 9780436288531

Publisher: Secker & Warburg, 1986

Synopsis

Judith is an aspiring young actress and the mistress of a writer on a popular satirical magazine. We learn of her involvement with drugs and increasing self-delusion. After a crack-up, she seeks healing in an Indian ashram run by an eccentric―and possibly mad―guru. But what is at the back of appearances; how calculated is the self-destructiveness from which a new order might emerge? Judith returns to England and joins up with Bert, one of a few friends who have helped her. Bert is making a film about an anti-Bomb demonstration outside a US airbase; the demonstrators have threatened to detonate a bomb themselves in protest. Within this increasingly chaotic setting Judith is led, by way of a search for a lost child of one of her friends, to a place of stillness at the center. But what attitude makes sense in this sort of world? Who survives? Judith is the third novel based on the interlocking fortunes of the characters in Catastrophe Practice. Once again, in a brilliantly incisive piece of writing, Nicholas Mosley questions and challenges the status quo. This is a revised version of the novel published in England in 1986.

About this title

About the Author

Born in London, Mosley was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford and served in Italy during the Second World War, winning the Military Cross for bravery. He succeeded as 3rd Baron Ravensdale in 1966 and, on the death of his father on 3 December 1980, he also succeeded to the Baronetcy. His father, Sir Oswald Mosley, founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932 and was a supporter of Benito Mussolini. Sir Oswald was arrested in 1940 for his antiwar campaigning, and spent the majority of World War II in prison. As an adult, Nicholas was a harsh critic of his father in "Beyond the Pale: Sir Oswald Mosley and Family 1933-1980" (1983), calling into question his father's motives and understanding of politics. Nicholas' work contributed to the 1998 Channel 4 television programme titled 'Mosley' based on his father's life. At the end of the mini-series, Nicholas is portrayed meeting his father in prison to ask him about his national allegiance. Mosley began to stammer as a young boy, and attended weekly sessions with speech therapist Lionel Logue in order to help him overcome the speech disorder. Mosley says his father claimed never really to have noticed his stammer, but feels Sir Oswald may have been less aggressive when speaking to him than he was towards other people as a result.

From Publishers Weekly

This Pinteresque third novel based on the characters in Mosley's earlier Catastrophe Practice takes the form of confessional letters written by Judith, a young actress on the fringe of English high society. Through Desmond, a journalist at a satirical magazine nicknamed Die Flamme, Judith is introduced to Oliver, a devastatingly attractive portrait painter who is rumored to be involved in Middle East arms procurement. Judith enters a sadistic relationship with Oliver, becoming increasingly paranoid from the drugs on which both are heavily dependent. Desmond is accidentally killed, and Judith, partly responsible, flees England to an Indian ashram run by a figure known simply as God. After the guru is the target of an assassination attempt, Judith flees again--this time back to England, where she takes up with her former lover Bert, a filmmaker documenting an antinuclear demonstration at an American air base, and tries to make sense of what she feels are the predestined, though seemingly random actions of her life so far. Tautly paced and bearing an authentic voice--Mosley immediately draws the reader into Judith's edgy, ambiguous inner world--the narrative is often poignant and in some ways haunting. However, the novel's obsession with nuclear annihilation and the resulting fatalistic actions of its characters, its background of drugs, free sex and ashrams seem oddly dated now, giving the impression of an earnest '60s period piece.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Secker & Warburg
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0436288532
• ISBN 13: 9780436288531
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 297