Wonders Will Never Cease - Softcover

Robert Irwin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1910213470 ISBN 13: 9781910213476

Publisher: Dedalus Ltd, 2016

Synopsis

'Robert Irwin's latest novel has much in common with Game of Thrones. Both are based on the gory struggle of the Wars of the Roses, both inject large amounts of magic and the occult into their narratives, and both are hugely enjoyable, fast-moving and filled with dark humour. Though Irwin uses the actual events of York versus Lancaster in 15th-century England, he is happy to change things to make a better story and how stories are created, recycled, embellished and interact with reality is at the heart of the book. It comprises a palimpsest of fables, myths, legends, romances, chronicles and sagas. His hero is Anthony, Lord Scales, brother to the beautiful Elizabeth who becomes Edward IV's queen, and one of the Woodville clan whose rapid and resented rise is one motor of the mayhem unleashed by these titled gangsters. We meet him first at the battle of Towton, the bloodiest in English history, where he is apparently killed. After three days of strange encounters in a limbo landscape he returns to life and continues on picaresque adventures of chivalry and horror. Often bewildered, often slipping into occult spaces, he meets people like Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d Arthur, and the alchemist Ripley (believe it or not) who turns Anthony's life into a legend. As one character observes: The real world is a poor thing compared to the stories that are told about it. ' Ian Irvine in Prospect Magazine

About this title

Review

'Historical fiction is founded on paradox: past generations were so different from and yet in some ways so similar to our own. In Robert Irwin's extraordinary tale a larger paradox looms. Amply researched yet unceasingly insistent on its own fictionality, Irwin's latest novel is like an intricate medieval tapestry or multicoloured stained-glass window, promising neither truth nor falsehood, only wonder... Where does a candle's flame go when it is snuffed out, Anthony wonders before kneeling at the block. Yet after closing this book its spell still lingers. Irwin has brilliantly refashioned medieval history as a myth for our own time.' --Andrew Crumey in The Literary Review

'The novel is a sort of marriage between AS Byatt and Terry Pratchett: one you can enjoy greatly on the first reading, but which will be even better second time round, as it's so densely packed with learning and allusions. This is a lightning trip around 15th-century culture, European culture and indeed world culture; if you didn't know Irwin was a scholarly man, you'd be convinced of that by the end of the book, and of his outstanding abilities as a novelist. Bravo.' --Tibor Fischer in The Guardian

Robert Irwin's novel The Arabian Nightmare was one of my favourite books of the early 1980s and one of the finest fantasies of the last century. His newest novel, Wonders Will Never Cease, is as erudite and well-constructed a historical fiction as The Arabian Nightmare, but is set in a medieval England that never quite was, and uses stories and fictions to illuminate and to make us gasp with awe. It's also often genuinely funny and quite beautifully written. --Neil Gaiman in Authors at Christmas

About the Author

Robert Irwin (born 1946) is a novelist, historian, critic and scholar. He is a fellow of The Royal Society of Literature. He is the author of seven novels: The Arabian Nightmare (1983), The Limits of Vision (1986), The Mysteries of Algiers (1988), Exquisite Corpse (1995), Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh (1997), Satan Wants Me (1999) and Wonders Will Never Cease (2016). All his novels have enjoyed substantial publicity and commercial success although he is best known for The Arabian Nightmare which has been translated into twenty languages an is considered by many critics to be one of the great literary fantasy novels of the twentieth century.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dedalus Ltd
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1910213470
• ISBN 13: 9781910213476
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 392