The Solid Mandala
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: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In the quiet suburban streets of Sarsaparilla, two brothers share one life — and one soul. The Solid Mandala is Patrick White's masterful 1966 novel that chronicles the deeply entwined existence of Arthur and Waldo Brown, twins who have spent their entire lives together yet remain profoundly, tragically apart. Waldo is the intellectual, brittle and vain, consumed by ambition he can never quite realise; Arthur, dismissed by the world as simple, carries within him an intuitive wisdom and spiritual wholeness that his brother can neither comprehend nor forgive. Their co-dependent relationship becomes a slow-burning psychological battleground, rich with tension, tenderness, and inevitable destruction. White, Australia's only Nobel Laureate in Literature, constructs his narrative in four interlocking sections, each revisiting the same shared life through radically different perspectives, illustrating how truth is always fractured and subjective. The mandala of the title — a glass marble Arthur treasures as a symbol of wholeness — becomes a potent emblem of the novel's central argument: that spiritual completeness is not found through intellect or ambition, but through love, instinct, and acceptance. Dense with symbolism, darkly comic, and achingly human, this novel stands as one of the great works of 20th-century literature. What does it mean to truly *know* another person — even one you have never lived a day without?
Author: Patrick White
Format: Paperback
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In the quiet suburban streets of Sarsaparilla, two brothers share one life — and one soul. The Solid Mandala is Patrick White's masterful 1966 novel that chronicles the deeply entwined existence of Arthur and Waldo Brown, twins who have spent their entire lives together yet remain profoundly, tragically apart. Waldo is the intellectual, brittle and vain, consumed by ambition he can never quite realise; Arthur, dismissed by the world as simple, carries within him an intuitive wisdom and spiritual wholeness that his brother can neither comprehend nor forgive. Their co-dependent relationship becomes a slow-burning psychological battleground, rich with tension, tenderness, and inevitable destruction. White, Australia's only Nobel Laureate in Literature, constructs his narrative in four interlocking sections, each revisiting the same shared life through radically different perspectives, illustrating how truth is always fractured and subjective. The mandala of the title — a glass marble Arthur treasures as a symbol of wholeness — becomes a potent emblem of the novel's central argument: that spiritual completeness is not found through intellect or ambition, but through love, instinct, and acceptance. Dense with symbolism, darkly comic, and achingly human, this novel stands as one of the great works of 20th-century literature. What does it mean to truly *know* another person — even one you have never lived a day without?