Arctic Summer - Hardcover

Galgut, Damon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0771036728 ISBN 13: 9780771036729

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 2014

Synopsis

This masterpiece novel -- by the internationally acclaimed, young South African writer Damon Galgut--about E.M. Forster, his life, struggles with homosexuality, and the writing of his universally loved novel A Passage to India will call to mind the international success of Colm Toibin's The Master. For readers of Colm Toibin, Ian McEwan, and J.M. Coetzee.
     In 1912, the SS Birmingham approaches India. On board is Morgan Forster, novelist and man of letters, who is embarking on a journey of discovery. As Morgan stands on deck, the promise of a strange new future begins to take shape before his eyes. The seeds of a story start to gather at the corner of his mind: a sense of impending menace, lust in close confines, under a hot, empty sky. It will be another twelve years, and a second, and much longer time spent in India, before A Passage to India, E.M. Forster's most beloved work of literature, is completed. During these years, Morgan will come to a recognition of his homosexuality and of the infinite subtleties and complexities of human nature. Arctic Summer is an intimate portrait of the man who became one of Britain's finest novelists, his struggle to find a way of living and being, and a stunningly vivid evocation of the mysterious alchemy of the creative process. Galgut animates the literary times in which Forster lived with encounters with some of the writers of the day, including Virginia and Leonard Woolf and D.H. Lawrence. Galgut also brilliantly and poignantly describes Forster's two closest relationships, enduring and sadly unfulfilled. Arctic Summer is a literary masterpiece, by one of the finest writers of his generation.

About this title

About the Author

DAMON GALGUT is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. His most recent novels include In a Strange Room, The Impostor, a regional finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book, and The Good Doctor, winner of a regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book and a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Galgut lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

Review

Praise for Damon Galgut:

"His powerful writing is honest and insightful, polished as it is to a marble-like perfection."
— Globe and Mail

“Galgut has so seamlessly incorporated Forster’s diaries, letters and novels into his narrative that it is often hard to tell which novelist is which. The book is frequently very moving, and contains nice touches of Forsterian drollery. . . .
“The pain of unequal love and the desolating gulf between desire and fulfillment, so beautifully conveyed here by Galgut in the case of a long-dead writer, is as recognisable today as it was over a century ago.”
— The Daily Telegraph
 
“It is a must-read for Forster fans but also stands alone as a man’s story of trying to live in a society which cannot fully accept him.” 
— Daily Echo (Bournemouth)
 
“Arctic Summer . . . [is] a masterly piece of writing. Delicate and detailed.”
— Daily Mail
 
“With insight and seemingly effortless fluidity, Mr.Galgut has written a beautiful, and at times funny, novel that movingly captures the duality of one of Britain’s most thoughtful authors.” – The Economist
 
“A remarkable, lyrical tribute...”
— The Guardian
 
“Damon Galgut, among the finest living writers, has not only given life to [E.M. Forster] a quiet enigma who suffered in love but looked at the inspiration and need that helped that enigma write six major novels.”
– Irish Times

“Galgut inhabits [E.M. Forster] with such sympathetic completeness, and in prose of such modest excellence, that he starts to breathe on the page.”
— Financial Times
 
“Beautifully written and utterly compelling.... A vivid, moving account of [E.M. Forster] that makes you want to read all his books again....Terrific.”
– The Times
 
“A bold, imaginative exploration of the novelist's inner life.” 
— The Observer
 
“Galgut is extremely good on Forster’s anxieties, his loneliness, his unworldliness.... The portrait is beautifully nuanced, a mixture of bold, colourful strokes and delicate little flicks.... Galgut writes touchingly about Forster’s mixture of profound reticence and fierce desire....”
– The Sunday Times

Edition details

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0771036728
• ISBN 13: 9780771036729
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368