Earthly Powers
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
One of the twentieth century's most audacious literary achievements opens with a line that immediately signals its ambition: an eighty-one-year-old homosexual novelist, Kenneth Toomey, is propositioned by a monsignor on behalf of his dying uncle — who happens to be the Pope. Earthly Powers chronicles eight decades of Western history through the eyes of Toomey, a Somerset Maugham-like figure whose long life intersects with dictators, saints, artists, and criminals across Europe and beyond, weaving a vast tapestry of faith, evil, creativity, and moral compromise. Anthony Burgess constructs his sweeping narrative with extraordinary linguistic virtuosity and a darkly comedic sensibility, interrogating the nature of good and evil with the rigour of a theologian and the irreverence of a satirist. The novel argues, with devastating conviction, that the capacity for both sanctity and monstrousness resides within the same human breast — and that the institutions of religion and art are no guarantee of either. A monumental work that stands alongside the great European novels of ideas, it leaves the reader questioning every comfortable assumption about virtue, history, and the soul.
Author: Anthony Burgess
Format: Hardback
Published: 1980, Simon & Schuster
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
One of the twentieth century's most audacious literary achievements opens with a line that immediately signals its ambition: an eighty-one-year-old homosexual novelist, Kenneth Toomey, is propositioned by a monsignor on behalf of his dying uncle — who happens to be the Pope. Earthly Powers chronicles eight decades of Western history through the eyes of Toomey, a Somerset Maugham-like figure whose long life intersects with dictators, saints, artists, and criminals across Europe and beyond, weaving a vast tapestry of faith, evil, creativity, and moral compromise. Anthony Burgess constructs his sweeping narrative with extraordinary linguistic virtuosity and a darkly comedic sensibility, interrogating the nature of good and evil with the rigour of a theologian and the irreverence of a satirist. The novel argues, with devastating conviction, that the capacity for both sanctity and monstrousness resides within the same human breast — and that the institutions of religion and art are no guarantee of either. A monumental work that stands alongside the great European novels of ideas, it leaves the reader questioning every comfortable assumption about virtue, history, and the soul.