Mervyn Peake1s Gormenghast trilogy is widely acknowledged to be, as Robertson Davies pronounced, 3a classic of our age.ý In these extraordinary novels, Peake created a world where all is like a dream--lush, fantastical, and vivid. Yet it was incomplete. Parkinson1s disease took Peake1s life in 1968, depriving his fans of the fourth and final volume of the series, Titus Awakes except for a few tantalizing pages, after which his writing became indecipherable. Or so it seemed.
In January of 2010, Peake1s granddaughter found four composition books in her attic. They contained the fabled Titus Awakes in its entirety. Peake had outlined the novel for his wife, Maeve Gilmore, who had at last finished Peake1s masterpiece.
It starts with Titus leaving Castle Gormenghast. Peake wrote: 3With every pace he drew away from Gormenghast mountain, and from everything that belonged to his home. That night, as Titus lay asleep in the tall barn, a nightmare held him. 3
Fans of Peake will delight in this new, wonderful novel, published one hundred years after his birth, every bit as thrilling and masterfully written as his famed trilogy.
Industry Reviews
"Gilmore finishes her husband's lush, fantastical Gormenghast series, drawing on the pages Peake left behind with his death in 1968." - - "LA Times"
Praise for Mervyn Peake:
"A gorgeous, volcanic eruption . . . a work of extraordinary imagination." --"The New Yorker"
"Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It is a very, very great work . . . a classic of our age." -- Robertson Davies, author of The Deptford Trilogy
"[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience." --C.S. Lewis
"The true fantasy classic of our time." -- "The Washington Post"
"Peake's style is marvelous... His inventiveness, his ingenuity, and his humor are astonishing." --"San Francisco Chronicle"
"Many readers admire Tolkien's Lord of the Praise for Mervyn Peake:
"Gormenghast is grotesque, gory, ghastly, mystical, lyrical, monstrous, mind-bending, and inarticulably beautiful." -- The Scattering Blog
"A gorgeous, volcanic eruption . . . a work of extraordinary imagination." --"The New Yorker"
"Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It is a very, very great work . . . a classic of our age." --Robertson Davies, author of The Deptford Trilogy
"[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience." --C.S. Lewis
"The true fantasy classic of our time." --"The Washington Post"
"Peake's style is marvelous... His inventiveness, his ingenuity, and his humor are astonishing." - -"San Francisco Chronicle"
"Many readers admire Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but Praise for Mervyn Peake:
?A gorgeous, volcanic eruption . . . a work of extraordinary imagination.? --"The New Yorker"
?Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It is a very, very great work . . . a classic of our age.? --Robertson Davies, author of The Deptford Trilogy
?[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience.? --C.S. Lewis
?The true fantasy classic of our time.? --"The Washington Post"
?Peake's style is marvelous... His inventiveness, his ingenuity, and his humor are astonishing.? --"San Francisco Chronicle"
?Many readers admire Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but fans of Mervyn Peake's Titus trilogy maintain that this extravagant epic about a labyrinthine castle populated with conniving Dickensian grotesques
