The Sot-Weed Factor
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:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - no tears. Page Condition: Yellowed. Markings: Previous owner sticker on title page with publisher. Binding condition: Binding intact.
In the rowdy, raucous world of colonial America, The Sot-Weed Factor chronicles the misadventures of Ebenezer Cooke, a naive and bumbling poet who sets sail from England to Maryland to claim his inherited tobacco plantation, only to find a New World far more chaotic, corrupt, and carnally charged than anything his sheltered imagination could have conceived. John Barth constructs an elaborate, picaresque odyssey steeped in bawdy humour, mistaken identities, and breathless plotting, capturing the turbulent spirit of the late 17th century with astonishing vitality and wit. A landmark of postmodern American literature, this monumental novel operates simultaneously as a riotous parody of the epic form and a serious meditation on identity, innocence, and the very nature of history itself. Barth's prose — dense, digressive, and gloriously excessive — mirrors the sprawling contradictions of the age it depicts, drawing on the stylistic conventions of 18th-century picaresque fiction to subvert them from within. Published in 1960 and revised in 1967, the novel remains one of the great achievements of 20th-century fiction, a work that rewards the patient reader with inexhaustible wit and intellectual depth — and leaves one wondering whether Ebenezer Cooke ever truly understood the world, or merely stumbled through it.
Author: John Barth
Format: Hardback
Published: 1976, Secker & Warburg
Genre: Classic fiction
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - no tears. Page Condition: Yellowed. Markings: Previous owner sticker on title page with publisher. Binding condition: Binding intact.
In the rowdy, raucous world of colonial America, The Sot-Weed Factor chronicles the misadventures of Ebenezer Cooke, a naive and bumbling poet who sets sail from England to Maryland to claim his inherited tobacco plantation, only to find a New World far more chaotic, corrupt, and carnally charged than anything his sheltered imagination could have conceived. John Barth constructs an elaborate, picaresque odyssey steeped in bawdy humour, mistaken identities, and breathless plotting, capturing the turbulent spirit of the late 17th century with astonishing vitality and wit. A landmark of postmodern American literature, this monumental novel operates simultaneously as a riotous parody of the epic form and a serious meditation on identity, innocence, and the very nature of history itself. Barth's prose — dense, digressive, and gloriously excessive — mirrors the sprawling contradictions of the age it depicts, drawing on the stylistic conventions of 18th-century picaresque fiction to subvert them from within. Published in 1960 and revised in 1967, the novel remains one of the great achievements of 20th-century fiction, a work that rewards the patient reader with inexhaustible wit and intellectual depth — and leaves one wondering whether Ebenezer Cooke ever truly understood the world, or merely stumbled through it.