Ransom

ISBN: 0099539527

Author: Malouf, David

Condition: New

Product Description A brilliant Homeric fable in miniature for our times -- a lyrical and surprising reworking of the story of the Trojan war by an acclaimed international writer.What happens when a young prince falls in battle and his body is spirited away to be desecrated and dishonoured? His death is the battle price of another young man's death, but what price dishonour and a father's grief?In this exquisite gem of a novel, David Malouf shines new light on Homer'sIliad, adding twists and reflections, as well as flashes of earthy humour, to surprise and enchant. His version opens with Achilles, maddened by grief at the death of his friend Patroclus. From the walls of Troy, King Priam watches the body of his son Hector being dragged behind Achilles' chariot. There must be a way, he thinks, of reclaiming the body -- of pitting compromise against heroics, new ways against the old, and of forcing the hand of fate. Dressed simply and in a cart pulled by a mule, an old man sets off for the Greek camp. Lyrical, immediate and heartbreaking, Malouf's fable engraves the epic themes of the Trojan war onto a perfect miniature -- themes of war and heroics, hubris and humanity, chance and fate, the bonds between soldiers, fathers and sons, all newly burnished and brilliantly recast for our times. Review "Ransom, his first novel in 10 years... is (however abused the word) a masterpiece, exquisitely written, pithy and wise and overwhelmingly moving, constructed with invisible, successful craft that leaves the reader wondering how in the world it has been done... Fiction, in Malouf's hands, becomes the art of rendering the world coherent."- Alberto Manguel,Australian Literary Review"These pages ofRansom are nothing short of magical. Malouf's prose is delicate, marvellously alert to the natural world and endowed with a quality that has one name only: wisdom."- Andrew Reimer,The Sydney Morning Herald"In austere, elegant prose that subverts Homer's Iliad in significant ways, David Malouf has created inRansom an imaginative terrain that is both new and old."- Rod Jones,The Age About the Author David Malouf is the internationally acclaimed author of novels includingThe Great World (winner of the Commonwealth Writers' prize and the Prix Femina Etranger),Remembering Babylon (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner ofthe IMPAC Dublin Literary Award),An Imaginary Life,Conversations at Curlow Creek and his autobiographical classic12 Edmondstone Street. His Collected Stories won the 2008 Australia-Asia Literary Award. In 2008 Malouf was the Scottish Arts' Council Muriel Spark International Fellow. Born in 1934 in Brisbane, where he was brought up, he lives in Sydney.