The Gates of Ivory

Fülszöveg

The Gates of Ivory
Margaret Drabble's highly successful previous novels, The Radiant Way and A Natural Curiosity, chronicled the lives of three fascinating women - meeting middle age head on in Margaret Thatcher's England - and pave the way for this astonishing sequel.
The Gates of Ivory is a vibrant and deeply affecting novel, which juxtaposes the cynical, sophisticated realm of London against a world of unimaginable circumstances. We meet old friends from the earlier novels, and are introduced to new characters, as Drabble charts the course of one who has wandered from the fold into the politically charged, exotic landscape of the Far East.
In London, psychiatrist Liz Headleand receives an unexpected package. Included in its contents are old newspaper clippings, postcards, a laundry bill from a hotel in Bangkok, a human finger bone, and scraps of manuscript and notebooks. She recognizes the handwriting as that of her friend, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, Stephen Cox, who... Tovább

Fülszöveg

The Gates of Ivory
Margaret Drabble's highly successful previous novels, The Radiant Way and A Natural Curiosity, chronicled the lives of three fascinating women - meeting middle age head on in Margaret Thatcher's England - and pave the way for this astonishing sequel.
The Gates of Ivory is a vibrant and deeply affecting novel, which juxtaposes the cynical, sophisticated realm of London against a world of unimaginable circumstances. We meet old friends from the earlier novels, and are introduced to new characters, as Drabble charts the course of one who has wandered from the fold into the politically charged, exotic landscape of the Far East.
In London, psychiatrist Liz Headleand receives an unexpected package. Included in its contents are old newspaper clippings, postcards, a laundry bill from a hotel in Bangkok, a human finger bone, and scraps of manuscript and notebooks. She recognizes the handwriting as that of her friend, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, Stephen Cox, who has been travelling in the East. Initially alarmed by the suggestion of Stephen's death, then intrigued, Liz attempts to piece together some meaning from the parcel's random and ominous contents.
She gradually enlists the help of other friends, including: Stephen's literary executor, the high-powered, hard-edged Hattie Osborne; teacher Alix Bowen, concerned with her husband's illness and still involved in her friendship with a man behind bars; art historian Esther Breuer, who has recently come back from Italy and found, as Hattie eventually does, a surprising new love. This is, as Drabble calls it, "The Good Time."
"The Bad Time" lurks across the Cambodian border, waiting for Stephen Cox, a restless, idealistic traveller from the prosperous West. We gradually learn of Stephen's difficult pilgrimage, first to Bangkok, where he meets the
(continued on back flap)
(continuedfrom front flap)
decadent Miss Porntip and a charismatic photographer from England, Konstantin Vassiliou. From Bangkok through the horrific refugee camps, then Saigon, Hanoi, and closer to the terrible world of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, at last into Cambodia.
Finally Liz decides to go properly in search of the man who might once have been her lover, leading to the novel's powerful conclusion.
At times disturbing, at times wryly humorous, The Gates of Ivory is a vividly observed novel of enormous sweep and resonance. Through the lives of her characters, Margaret Drabble has brought two very different worlds into uneasy proximity, and the result is potent. Her magnificent descriptive powers, her intelligence and penetrating wit, will ensure that this is a novel that will not be soon forgotten.
Margaret Drabble was born in 1939 in Sheffield, England. After attending a Quaker school she studied English at Cambridge and later worked with The Royal Shakespeare Company.
Her first novel, A Summer Bird-Cage, was published in 1963. Nine novels followed, including The Ice Age (1977), The Middle Ground (1980), the international bestseller, The Radiant Way (1987) and A Natural Curiosity (1989).
Drabble is the author of several critical studies and biographies and, in 1985, she completed the editing of the revised Oxford Companion to English Literature. She was awarded the C.B.E. by Queen Elizabeth II in 1980.
Married since 1982 to the noted biographer Michael Holroyd, Margaret Drabble lives and writes in London. Vissza