Lawrence Norfolk Livres

Hist.- enq. politico-financ. à travers 2 siècle et 3 continents ...

The eighth volume in the British Council's "New Writing" series, which exists to promote the best in contemporary literature. This one features new writing from such people as Louis De Bernieres, Hanif Kureishi, Don Paterson, A.S. Byatt, William Boyd, Lana Citron, and Barry Unsworth.

A beautiful, rich and sensuous historical novel, John Saturnall's Feast tells the story of a young orphan who becomes a kitchen boy at a manor house, and rises through the ranks to become the greatest Cook of his generation. It is a story of food, star-crossed lovers, ancient myths and one boy's rise from outcast to hero. Orphaned when his mother dies of starvation, having been cast out of her village as a witch, John is taken in at the kitchens at Buckland Manor, where he quickly rises from kitchen-boy to Cook, and is known for his uniquely keen palate and natural cooking ability. However, he quickly gets on the wrong side of Lady Lucretia, the aristocratic daughter of the Lord of the Manor. In order to inherit the estate, Lucretia must wed, but her fiance is an arrogant buffoon. When Lucretia takes on a vow of hunger until her father calls off her engagement to her insipid husband-to-be, it falls to John to try to cook her delicious foods that might tempt her to break her fast. Reminiscent of Wolf Hall and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell , John Saturnall's Feast is a brilliant work and a delight for all the senses.

In pre-Homeric times, the Greek heroes ¿ and one heroine ¿ united one last time to hunt down the ferocious Boar of Kalydon, sent by Artemis to ravage the land. Within the ancient sources lies a darker tale ¿ one of treachery among the hunters and a destructive love affair Three and a half millennia later, the hunt for the Boar of Kalydon is re-enacted, and once again re-told. In the final months of the Second World War, Greek partisans pursue their quarry ¿ an SS officer ¿ in the same mountains the ancient Boar of Kalydon once roamed. Witness to the hunt is Sol Memel, a young Rumanian-Jewish poet fleeing for his life. Sol has lost his family and abandoned his lover, Ruth. Sol¿s role in the SS officer¿s eventual capture and killing inspires him to rewrite the ancient myth as a poem. Die Keilerjagd is acclaimed throughout post-war Europe and Sol is hailed as the voice of a generation. But Die Keilerjagd contains its own secret. When Ruth reappears twenty-five years later and proposes a film based on the writing of the poem, Sol finds himself cast as the quarry in this new telling of the tale. Under the camera¿s unforgiving lens, the ghosts of Sol¿s wartime past materialise ¿ behind them stand the ghosts of ancient Greece, the long-dead heroes who hold the truth behind the story of the original hunt.

In February 1516, a Portugese ship sank with the loss of all hands a mile off the coast of Italy. The Nostra Senora da Adjuda had sailed 14000 miles from the Indian kingdom Gujarat- her mission, to deliver a rhinoceros to the Pope. The Pope's Rhinoceros tells the stories which culminate in this bizarre incident. Ranging from the Baltic Sea to a flyblown colony in India, from a tribe hidden in the African rain forest to atrocities committed in an obscure town in Tuscany, Norfolk's brilliant novel holds up the true history of the rhinoceros as a mirror to the fantasies and obsessions of the Renaissance.