Mervyn Peake - Böcker

ENTER THE CRUMBLING WORLD OF GORMENGHAST...'A modern classic' Anthony Burgess'A gorgeous volcanic eruption... A work of extraordinary imagination' New Yorker'A perfect creation' Neil Gaiman Gormenghast is the vast, crumbling castle to which the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, is lord and heir. Titus is expected to rule this gothic labyrinth of turrets and dungeons (and his eccentric and wayward subjects) according to strict age-old rituals, but things are changing in the castle. Titus must contend with treachery, manipulation and murder as well as his own longing for a life beyond the castle walls.'Peake's books are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before' C. S. Lewis

As the first novel opens, Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born: he stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that stand for Gormenghast Castle. Inside, all events are predetermined by a complex ritual, lost in history, understood only by Sourdust, Lord of the Library. There are tears and strange laughter; fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings; dreams and violence and disenchantment contained within a labyrinth of stone.

Equipped with love, Mr Harold Pye lands on the island of Sark, his mission to convert the islanders into a crusading force for the undiluted goodness that he feels within. The extraordinary inhabitants of the island range from the formidable Miss George in her purple busby to the wanton, raven-haired Tintagieu, 'five foot three inches of sex'. Mr Pye, however, is prone to excess and in the increasingly personalised struggle between good and evil, excess is very nearly his downfall.

In Titus Awakes the 77th Earl of Groan leaves the crumbling castle of Gormenghast and finds the larger world even stranger than his birthplace. Confronted by elemental and human threats - snowstorms, shipwrecks and attempts on his life - Titus' bravery is tested and he must fight to free himself from the claims of his past. Peake began this fourth and final volume of the Gormenghast stories but he died having only written a few pages. Using notes and the fragments he left behind, his wife, the painter and writer Maeve Gilmore, has created a richly imagined sequel that fans of The Gormenghast Trilogy will delight in.

Lost in the frozen polar wastes, an explorer huddles in his shelter, typing, with frozen fingers, the story of his lonely, extraordinary exploits, preparing to send the story to the nephew he has never seen. With his only companion, the tortoise-like mutant Jackson, the Uncle has gone in search of his ambition and his destiny: the awesome and mysterious White Lion. Illustrated on every page with stunning, beautiful, eerie original drawings, "Letters from a Lost Uncle" is the product of a unique imagination and a distillation of all that is most powerful in the strange genius of Mervyn Peake. Painstakingly re-originated from Peake's original artwork and typescript, this edition celebrates the centenary of Mervyn Peake's birth in 2011 and is re-issued alongside Peake's illustrated edition of Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" (Methuen ISBN 978 0413 777140).

'The Gormenghast Trilogy is one of the most important works of the imagination to come out of [this] age' Anthony BurgessBOOK TWO OF THE GORMENGHAST TRILOGYEnter the world of Gormenghast...the vast crumbling castle to which the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, is Lord and heir. Gothic labyrinth of roofs and turrets, cloisters and corridors, stairwells and dungeons, it is also the cobwebbed kingdom of Byzantine government and age-old rituals, a world primed to implode beneath the weight of centuries of intrigue, treachery, manipulation and murder.Gormenghast is more than a sequel to Titus Groan - it is an enrichment and deepening of that book.The fertility of incident, character and rich atmosphere combine in a tour de force that ranks as one of the twentieth century's most remarkable feats of imaginative writing.

DISCOVER THE THRILLING CONCLUSION TO THE GORMENGHAST TRILOGY'I would not for anything have missed Gormenghast' C S LewisTitus Groan, now almost twenty, escapes from Castle Gormenghast, flees its oppressive Ritual, and becomes lost in a sandstorm.Helped by the owner of a travelling zoo, Muzzlehatch, and his ex-lover Juno, Titus ends up stranded in a big, bustling city. No one there having heard of Gormenghast, the general consensus is that the boy is deranged, and with no papers, he's soon arrested for vagrancy.But there are a few people who believe in his story, or at least who are intrigued by it, and they try to help him. And now Titus, the deserter, the traitor, longs for his home, and looks for it all the time to prove, if only to himself, that Gormenghast is truly real.'[The Gormenghast Trilogy] is one of the most important works of the imagination to come out of the age that also produced The Four Quartets, The Unquiet Grave, Brideshead Revisited, The Loved One, Animal Farm and 1984.' Anthony Burgess

This work is adapted from Mervyn Peake's great gothic trilogy, a fantastical world comes to life. In one extraordinary evening of physical theatre you will enter a world of grotesque characters, fantastic ritual and heart-rending drama. It is not for the faint-hearted. David Glass Ensemble revives its award-winning production - one of its greatest hits of the 1990's. "Gormenghast" opens at the Lighthouse Theatre, Poole in May 2006.