A 'lost' Shakespeare play unearthed by acclaimed novelist Arthur Phillips.
The doomed hero of The Tragedy of Arthur is Arthur Phillips, a young man struggling with a larger-than-life father, a con artist who works wonders of deception but is a very unreliable parent. Arthur is raised in an enchanted world of smoke and mirrors where the only certain fact is his father's and beloved sister's shared love for the works of William Shakespeare - a love so pervasive that Arthur becomes a writer in a misguided bid to win their approval and affection.
Years later, Arthur's father, imprisoned for decades and nearing the end of his life, shares with Arthur a treasure he's 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 father's mission: to see the play published and acknowledged as the Bar's last great gift to humanity...
Unless it's their father's last great con.
By turns hilarious and haunting, this virtuosic novel - which includes Shakespeare's lost King Arthur play in its five-act entirety - captures 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 Arthurs - Arthur the novelist and Arthur the ancient king - play out their individual but strangely intertwined fates.
About the Author
Arthur Phillips is the internationally bestselling author of The Song Is You, Angelica, The Egyptologist and Prague. He lives in New York with his wife and two sons.
Industry Reviews
"[Balances] a moving story of familial and romantic love on a deliberately unsteady fictional edifice . . . [an] exuberant chimera of a novel."--"The New Yorker"
"Splendidly devious.""--The New York Times Book Review"
"Wily and witty . . . an engrossing family saga [with] sparkling and imaginative prose. Shakespeare would applaud a man who does him so proud."--"The Boston Globe"
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"Arthur Phillips has found the perfect vehicle for his cerebral talents: his ingenuity; his bright, elastic prose; and, most notably, his penchant for pastiche--for pouring his copious literary gifts into old vessels and reinventing familiar genres."--"The New York Times"
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"Devious and exhilarating . . . an irresistible family drama bundled into an exploration of fraud and authenticity."--"The Wall Street Journal"
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"A circus of a novel, full of wit, pathos and irrepressible intelligence."--Minneapolis "Star Tribune"
"The story of a family that is Shakespearean in several senses . . . ["The Tragedy of Arthur"] contains literary echoes of Nabokov, Stoppard and even . . . Thomas Pynchon."--"San Francisco Chronicle" Praise for "Tragedy of Arthur"
"Splendidly devious."
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, COVER REVIEW
"[Phillips] best trick is to balance a moving story of familial and romantic love on a deliberately unsteady fictional edifice...[an] exuberant chimera of a novel. Boldly he includes the full five-act play itself, a virtuosic counterfeit."
--THE NEW YORKER
"Sparkling and imaginative.... Shakespeare would applaud a man who does him so proud. Readers, too, may well praise Phillips for crafting so wily and witty an excursion into the ties that bind fiction and life."
- BOSTON GLOBE
"His wildest and funniest yet, at once homage to Nabokov's Pale Fire, satire of literary hagiography in general and Shakespeare scholarship in particular, and a hilarious yet trenchant riff on memoirs."
- NPR.org
"Devious and exhilarating... such a wonderful con job."
- Wall Street Journal
"Wily and wonderful...a shape-shifting stunner... diabolically merry." Praise for Arthur Phillips
"Ingenious . . . [Phillips] presents [his characters] with a wry generosity and a haunting poignancy to rival his wonderfully subversive wit."--"The New York Times, " on "Prague"
"A wonder, a work of imaginative prowess . . . It's ambitious. It's inventive. It's challenging. . . . Phillips's approach is certainly literary, but he also knows how to craft a twisting, page-turning tale."--"San Francisco Chronicle, " on "The Egyptologist"
"[A] masterpiece . . . seamlessly mixes psychological disintegration, the dissolution of a marriage and . . . a classic ghost story."--"USA Today, " on "Angelica"
"Daring . . . [an] incandescent new novel . . . richly human, filled with unexpected grace . . . A burning urgency animates the tale."--"The Washington Post, " on "The Song Is You"
"It's a tricky project, funny and brazen, smart and playful." -"Publisher's Weekly, starred review"
