Rites Of Passage
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: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good , price clipped
Markings: Previous owner
A landmark work of literary historical fiction, Rites of Passage chronicles the treacherous sea voyage of Edmund Talbot, a young, self-important English aristocrat sailing to Australia in the early nineteenth century aboard a decrepit man-of-war. Told through Talbot's journal entries, the novel presents a sharp and ironic portrait of class, hypocrisy, and moral blindness, as the narrator remains largely oblivious to the tragedy unfolding around him — particularly the humiliation and mysterious fate of the Reverend Colley, a naive clergyman destroyed by the cruelties of shipboard society. William Golding constructs a deeply layered narrative that illustrates how social hierarchies breed cruelty and how shame can prove as lethal as any physical danger. The tone is at once darkly comic and profoundly unsettling, with Golding wielding Talbot's unreliable voice to expose the vast gulf between self-perception and moral reality. Winner of the Booker Prize in 1980, Rites of Passage stands as a masterful meditation on civilization's thin veneer and the darkness that lurks beneath the rituals of rank and respectability.
Author: William Golding
Format: Hardback
Published: 1980, Faber & Faber
Genre: Historical fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good , price clipped
Markings: Previous owner
A landmark work of literary historical fiction, Rites of Passage chronicles the treacherous sea voyage of Edmund Talbot, a young, self-important English aristocrat sailing to Australia in the early nineteenth century aboard a decrepit man-of-war. Told through Talbot's journal entries, the novel presents a sharp and ironic portrait of class, hypocrisy, and moral blindness, as the narrator remains largely oblivious to the tragedy unfolding around him — particularly the humiliation and mysterious fate of the Reverend Colley, a naive clergyman destroyed by the cruelties of shipboard society. William Golding constructs a deeply layered narrative that illustrates how social hierarchies breed cruelty and how shame can prove as lethal as any physical danger. The tone is at once darkly comic and profoundly unsettling, with Golding wielding Talbot's unreliable voice to expose the vast gulf between self-perception and moral reality. Winner of the Booker Prize in 1980, Rites of Passage stands as a masterful meditation on civilization's thin veneer and the darkness that lurks beneath the rituals of rank and respectability.