Robertson Davies - Böcker

At two minutes to six on December 27th 1908 the lives of three people become inextricably bound together by the trajectory of a snowball. There is ten-year old Dunstable Ramsay, intended victim of the snowball, who, fatefully, ducks; his 'lifelong friend and enemy' Percy Boyd Staunton, angered by their recent quarrel, who hurls the snowball; and Paul Dempster, prematurely born when his pregnant mother is struck by Percy's icy missile. Tracing the rich and varied lives of these three individuals, The Deptford Trilogy lures the reader down labyrinthine tunnels of myth, history and magic in one of the most beguiling, clever and cunning trilogies ever written.

When Father Hobbes mysteriously dies at the high altar on Good Friday, Dr Jonathan Hullah - whose holistic ideas have earned him the soubriquet 'cunning man' - wants to know why. But it is only through looking back at his own long life that answers are forthcoming. He recalls the dazzling intellectual high jinks of his circle of friends, from the High Church homosexual Darcy Dwyer (an expert on the theory of sin) to the curious occurrence of the Coburg Social Parlour's Seventh Annual Bad Breath Contest. Compelling and hilarious, The Cunning Man is a profound exploration of what it means to be an actor in the divine comedy of life.

Around a mysterious death is woven a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived trilogy of novels: "Fifth Business", often described as Robertson Davies' finest novel; "The Manticore", and "World of Wonders". Luring the reader down labyrinthine tunnels of myth, history and magic, "The Deptford Trilogy" provides an exhilarating antidote to a world from where 'the fear and dread and splendour of wonder have been banished. 'His books will be recognized with the very best works of this century' - "The New York Times" Book Review.

The University of St John and the Holy Ghost (known affectionately as Spook) has a problem - and an opportunity. Strange, eccentric art patron and collector Francis Cornish has died and faculty members have been made executors of his complicated will. But in the realization of their duties, they find themselves drawn into Cornish's bizarre, secretive and mystical world. In this spellbinding trilogy a host of memorable characters - defrocked, mischief-making monks, half-mad professors, gypsies and musical geniuses - become entangled in a story that involves theft, perjury, scholarship, murder, love, and the squandering of plenty of cash.

Robertson Davies has been called the most important Canadian playwright of the postwar period. These two plays from the 1940s prove that great writing and important themes never go out of style.