Lunching With the Antichrist: A Family History: 1925-2015 - Hardcover

Moorcock, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0929480465 ISBN 13: 9780929480466

Publisher: Mark V Ziesing, 1994

Synopsis

Seven stories about members of the Von Bek family during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as they each play the role of Seeker

About this title

Review

The London Times writes, "Moorcock is a true heir to the 19th century, in his breadth of vision as much as his eclecticism. [He writes of] comic-book heroes and of the Sex Pistols, street music and the Tarot, London and North Africa, science fiction and political satire, literary criticism and literary parody."

In this collection of interrelated stories, he takes us from rural England to London, from the French Mediterranean to North Africa, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, from 1920 to the early 21st century.

"His characters persevere and their fulfilling tales of strife and survival prove ultimately engaging, even in their most morose moments." --Publisher's Weekly

From Publishers Weekly

These seven stories from Nebula winner Moorcock's (Mother London) Von Bek series are linked through what the author, in his introduction, says is his narrator's elegiac but "cautiously optimistic" need to believe in a world in which people can look for "some kind of resolution or meaning to their lives." As the narrator of the book's centerpiece, "The Cairene Purse," notes, "We could not bring back the Golden Age. Indeed we were now paying the price of having enjoyed one." Potential avenues of hope, recounted in the other selections, prove ineffective: Tarot ("Wheel of Fortune"), rock music ("Dead Singers"), drugs ("The Opium General") and military force ("Crossing into Cambodia"). And "The Cairene Purse" itself dismisses the possibilities both of technological solutions and salvation by space aliens. The tone here is ultimately more that of a Kaddish than of Revelations. The human spirit lives on, even though little fruit comes of anyone's labors. Just as the narrator of "Crossing into Cambodia" survives its concluding atomic explosion, Moorcock plainly hopes-but may not expect-that humanity will endure. His characters persevere, and their fulfilling tales of strife and survival prove ultimately engaging, even in their most morose moments.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mark V Ziesing
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0929480465
• ISBN 13: 9780929480466
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216