β Scribed by Arthur Phillips
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The Tragedy of Arthur is an emotional and elaborately constructed tour de force from bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist Arthur Phillips, one of the best writers in America (The Washington Post).
Its doomed hero is Arthur Phillips, a young man struggling with a larger-than-life father, a con artist who works wonders of deception but is a most unreliable parent. Arthur is raised in an enchanted world of smoke and mirrors where the only unshifting truth is his fathers and his beloved twin sisters deep and abiding love for the works of William Shakespearea love so pervasive that Arthur becomes a writer in a misguided bid for their approval and affection.
Years later, Arthurs father, imprisoned for decades and nearing the end of his life, shares with Arthur a treasure hes kept secret for half a century: a previously unknown play by Shakespeare, titled The Tragedy of Arthur. But Arthur and his sister also inherit their fathers mission: to see the play published and acknowledged as the Bards last great gift to humanity. . . .
Unless its their fathers last great con.
By turns hilarious and haunting, this virtuosic novelwhich includes Shakespeares (?) lost King Arthur play in its five-act entiretycaptures the very essence of romantic and familial love and betrayal. The Tragedy of Arthur explores the tension between storytelling and truth-telling, the thirst for originality in all our lives, and the act of literary mythmaking, both now and four centuries ago, as the two ArthursArthur the novelist and Arthur the ancient kingplay out their individual but strangely intertwined fates.
ANew York TimesNotable Book ANew YorkerReviewers Favorite of the Year A Wall Street Journal Best Novel of the Year A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year A Chicago Tribune Favorite Book of the Year ALibrary JournalTop Ten Book of the Year AKirkus ReviewsBest Book of the Year One of Salonsfive best novels of the year
Starred Review. A long-lost Shakespeare play surfaces in Phillips's wily fifth novel, a sublime faux memoir framed as the introduction to the play's first printinga Modern Library edition, of course. Arthur Phillips and his twin sister, Dana, maintained an uncommon relationship with their gregarious father, a forger whose passion for the bard and for creating magic in the everyday (he takes his kids to make crop circles one night) leave lasting impressions on them both: Dana becomes a stage actress and amateur Shakespeare expert; Arthur a writer who "never much liked Shakespeare." Their father spends most of their lives in prison, but when he's about to be released as a frail old man, he enlists Arthur in securing the publication of The Tragedy of Arthur from an original quarto he claims to have purloined from a British estate decades earlier, though, as the authentication process wears onsuccessfullyArthur becomes convinced the play is his father's greatest scam. Along the way, Arthur riffs on his career and ex-pat past, and, most excruciatingly, unpacks his relationship with Dana and his own romantic flailings. Then there's the play itself, which reads not unlike something written by the man from Stratford-upon-Avon. It's a tricky project, funny and brazen, smart and playful. (Apr.)
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The always-original Phillips has outdone himself in this clever literary romp. Successfully blending and bending genres, he positions himself as a character in a novel that skewers Shakespearean scholarship, the publishing industry, and his own life to rollicking effect. Poised on the brink of literary history, Random House is about to publish a recently discovered Shakespearean play that had languished for centuries until unearthed by Phillips' own father, also named Arthur Phillips. As literary executor of his father's estate, the younger Arthur is invited to provide a 'brief' introduction to this masterpiece, detailing the often questioned provenance of the play and his own eccentrically dysfunctional family in the process. Oh, by the way, the play, complete with scholarly notes, is also appended. Who wrote the play? Was it Arthur Phillips or William Shakespeare? How much truth does an author actually reveal in a fictional memoir? How low will a publishing company sink in pursuit of a literary coup? Does a play within a novel ever make sense? For the answers to these and other burning questions, you simply must read the book. High-Demand Backstory: Phillips, who has been on everyone's radar since the publication of Prague (2007), continues to intrigue and amaze. --Margaret Flanagan
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### From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. A long-lost Shakespeare play surfaces in Phillips's wily fifth novel, a sublime faux memoir framed as the introduction to the play's first printinga Modern Library edition, of course. Arthur Phillips and his twin sister, Dana, maintained an uncommon relati
### From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. A long-lost Shakespeare play surfaces in Phillips's wily fifth novel, a sublime faux memoir framed as the introduction to the play's first printingβa Modern Library edition, of course. Arthur Phillips and his twin sister, Dana, maintained an uncommon relat
In *The Winter King* and *Enemy of God* Bernard Cornwell demonstrated his astonishing ability to make the oft-told legend of King Arthur fresh and new for our time. Now, in this riveting final volume of The Warlord Chronicles, Cornwell tells the unforgettable tale of Arthur's final struggles against
From T. H. White's The Once And Future King to Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists Of Avalon, the legend of King Arthur has haunted and inspired generations of writers to reinvent the ancient story. In The Winter King and Enemy Of God, Bernard Cornwell demonstrated his astonishing ability to make the
In *The Winter King* and *Enemy of God* Bernard Cornwell demonstrated his astonishing ability to make the oft-told legend of King Arthur fresh and new for our time. Now, in this riveting final volume of The Warlord Chronicles, Cornwell tells the unforgettable tale of Arthur's final struggles against