Madame Sosostris and the festival for the brokenhearted
"In this modern fable with the impish magic of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a masked ball makes two upper-class British couples see each other in a new light. A wise, enchanting novel about love, power, and our many selves-past and future, public and private-from the Booker Prize-winning author. There...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Other Press,
2025.
|
| Subjects: | |
| Tags: |
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | "In this modern fable with the impish magic of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a masked ball makes two upper-class British couples see each other in a new light. A wise, enchanting novel about love, power, and our many selves-past and future, public and private-from the Booker Prize-winning author. There are organizations for people who grieve, for alcoholics and other kinds of addicts. But if you've been devastated by the love of your life walking out on you, where the hell do you go? On the 20th anniversary of the day her first husband left her, Viv decides to host an unconventional party for those burned by love. She successfully ropes in her reluctant second husband, Alan, and their friends Beatrice and Stephen, and when she meets the famed fortuneteller Madame Sosostris-last seen in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and rumored to be the secret to success of 5 prime ministers-she believes she's found the perfect act to headline her masquerade. In a sacred wood in the south of France, the partygoers disguise themselves and wait eagerly for the great clairvoyant, who might be able to mend their broken pasts and brighten their futures. But the night soon goes awry, in a comically revealing way that causes our couples to question their relationships and the direction of their lives"-- |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | 196 pages 21 cm |
| ISBN: | 9781635425284 163542528X |
| Author Notes: | After failing to be placed in a university, Okri began writing articles on social and political issues. Most of them were not published, but he began writing short stories based on these articles and they began finding their way into women's journals and evening papers. In 1978, he moved back to England where he studied comparative literature at Essex University but was forced to leave without a degree because of a lack of funds. He was a poetry editor of West Africa and worked also for the BBC. At nineteen, he finished his first novel "Flowers and Shadows" and it was published in 1980. The story attacked corruption in newly independent Nigeria and tells of a successful businessman whose jealous relatives make his life difficult. Okri's second novel, "The Landscapes Within" (1981), traces the adventures of a young, poor painter in Lagos. This novel was followed by two collections of short stories, "Incidents at the Shrine" (1986), and "Starts of the New Curfew" (1988). Several of the stories tell of the Biafran War from a child's eyes. The novel "The Famished Road" (1991) tells the story of a character who must choose between the pain of mortality and the land of the spirits. Okri's next novel, "Songs of Enchantment" (1993), continued with the mythical and poetical view of the world. "An African Elegy" (1992), is a collection of poems with classical themes. Okri has won several awards, which include the Booker Prize (1991), the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa (1987), the Paris Review Aga Khan prize for fiction, the Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize, and the Premio Grinzane Cavour. (Bowker Author Biography) |
