Goose of Hermogenes

A trance-like feminist fairy tale of magic, alchemy, and the battle of the sexes—for fans of Angela Carter, Leonora Carrington, and O Caledonia

Britain’s foremost surrealist painter puts a lushly visual spin on the Philosopher’s Stone in her first-ever novel!

In this modern fairy tale inspired by alchemy, a nameless narrator is determined to protect the precious jewels in her possession from her uncle, the Prospero-like ruler of an island stronghold. Locked in a battle of wills, her uncle is equally determined to steal the jewels and use their power in his attempts to conquer death by magic.

Trapped in his house, she must use guile, strength, and the knowledge unlocked by a series of dreamlike encounters to escape without becoming herself a victim of his dark rituals. By the end of the novel, she has passed through numerous stages of transformation, discovered sexual ecstasy, spoken with the dead, and returned to where she began—her family home.

Enchanted islands, journeys across water, myth, magic and mystery define this narrative of twists and turns. The Goose of Hermogenes, which is another name for the philosopher’s stone, can transmute base metals into gold and confer eternal life. Structured around the process of alchemical transformation, rife with symbolic imagery, hallucinatory trances and cries from the unconscious, Colquhoun's novel is a feminist fable and its creator's supreme artistic vision.

Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) was born in British India and brought up in the United Kingdom. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and started exhibiting her paintings in the 1930s, gaining some renown as one of the few women associated with British Surrealism. She began visiting Cornwall during the Second World War, and eventually moved there, continuing to write, paint, and pursue the study of the occult until her death. As well as her novel Goose of Hermogenes, she is the author of two travelogues, The Living Stones: Cornwall and The Crying of the Wind: Ireland, both forthcoming from Pushkin Press.