Arctic Summer - Hardcover

Galgut, Damon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857897187 ISBN 13: 9780857897183

Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2014

Synopsis

Damon Galgut's third novel, a fictionalized biography of English author E.M. Forster, focuses on Forster's many years in India and the process of writing his masterpiece, A Passage to India. This compact, finely wrought novel also addresses Forster's unforgiving childhood in England and the homosexuality he feared and repressed throughout his life. Psychologically acute without being sentimental, Forster's relationships are described with compassion and great care. Galgut is a master at constructing strange, compelling landscapes, and Arctic Summer shifts seamlessly between staid, restricting England and Cairo and vibrant, pleasantly, absurd India. Moments of gentle humor shine through the sparse prose, lending Forster a humanity that makes his story all the more heartbreaking.

About this title

About the Author:

Damon Galgut was born in Pretoria in 1963. He wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season, when he was seventeen. His other books include Small Circle of Beings, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs, The Quarry, The Good Doctor, The Impostor and In A Strange Room. The Good Doctor was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Dublin/IMPAC Award, The Impostor was also shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and In a Strange Room was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He lives in Cape Town.

Review:

Preoccupied by varieties of sadness - but is so crisply written, with a deceptive simplicity and directness, that it feels full of affirmations -- Summer picks * Guardian * How apt that Arctic Summer, a chronicle or a writer's longest journey to complete his masterpiece, also happens to be Galgut's finest book to date. * The Herald (Scotland) * Galgut's gifts - of phrasing, of structure, of perception - are on faultless form in these pages... Arctic Summer is a masterpiece. * Sunday Business Post * A beautifully imagined piece, getting deep inside the mind of a major English novelist. * Mail on Sunday * A masterly piece of fiction. Delicate and detailed. * Daily 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. * Daily Telegraph * It is a project to which Galgut, whose fiction has often covered the terrain of love, race and politics, seems perfectly suited as a writer... A remarkable, lyrical tribute. * Guardian * 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. * Economist * 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 of the brush. * Sunday Times * Beautifully written and utterly compelling... A vivid, moving account of the man that makes you want to read all his books again. * The Times * Could well be one of the finest literary works published this year... Damon Galgut, among the finest living writers, has not only given life to a quiet enigma who suffered in love but looked at the inspiration and need that helped that enigma write six major novels. * Irish Times *

About this edition

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0857897187
• ISBN 13: 9780857897183
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368