The Root and the Flower (New York Review Books Classics) - Softcover

Myers, L.H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0940322609 ISBN 13: 9780940322608

Publisher: NYRB Classics, 2001

Synopsis

Set in the war-torn world of Mughal India and first published in the gathering darkness of the 1930s, the three novels collected in The Root and the Flower are stories of intrigue, murder, and romance; of Tantric abandonment and Buddhist renunciation; of emotional delirium and spiritual adventure. This enthralling visionary trilogy is, as Penelope Fitzgerald remarks in her introduction, a "strange masterpiece," and one of the unsung glories of modern literature.

About this title

About the Author

L.H. (Leopold Hamilton) Myers is the author of The Orissers (1923), The Clio (1925), Strange Glory (1936), and The Pool of Vishnu (1940), which was intended to complete the story told in The Root and the Flower. The son of a founding member of the Society for Psychical Research, Myers was deeply concerned with issues of spiritual transcendence and social justice; briefly active with the Bloomsbury Group, he later rejected what he judged the members’ insufficient regard for spiritual matters. He committed suicide in 1944.

Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) graduated with honors from Somerville College, Oxford, and worked at a variety of jobs until, in 1975, she published her first book, a biography of the pre-Raphaelite master Edward Burne-Jones. She was the author of two other biographies and ten works of fiction, among them The Blue Flower, Human Voices, and The Bookshop.

Reviews

The Root and the Flower, British writer L.H. Myers's strange, mystical historical trilogy, was first published in the 1930s, and will now be reissued in one volume with an introduction by Penelope Fitzgerald. Set in a dreamlike version of Moghal India, it follows the adventures of a prince, his wife and their son Jali, each struggling separately with temptation and spiritual malaise. Lyrically written and exquisitely imagined, it is a haunting minor classic.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Myers's epic of India was originally published as three novels between 1929 and 1935. Large in scope, the novel covers political, religious, and ethnic conflicts that have ravaged that country for years. This edition includes an introduction by Penelope Fitzgerald.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: NYRB Classics
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0940322609
• ISBN 13: 9780940322608
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 640