Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
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Gormenghast

Author: Mervyn Peake

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 18 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/23/2011

Categories: Fiction, Fantasy

Synopsis

A doomed lord, an emergent hero, and an array of bizarre creatures haunt the world of the Gormenghast trilogy, which reigns as one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. At the center of it all is Titus Groan, the seventy-seventh Earl, who stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle and its kingdom.In this second volume, Titus comes of age within the walls of Gormenghast Castle and discovers various family intrigues. Having been “exiled” to grow up with the common children until the age of fifteen, Titus has discovered secret hiding places in the castle from where he can watch and learn unobserved. Disconnected from his future responsibilities, Titus drifts back and forth between the complicated social world he will grow up to govern and a world of fantasy and daydream.

About Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Laurence Peake (1911–1968) is an author best known for his Gormenghast fantasy fiction trilogy. He also published illustrated verse and short stories for children, plays, short stories, and novels. He was awarded the W. H. Heinemann Foundation Prize by the Royal Society of Literature in 1950. He was born and raised in China until the age of eleven. He went on to study at the Royal Academy School in London, where he developed as an artist, designer, and writer. He worked as an artist on the island of Sark for several years and then returned to London to hold several exhibitions of his artwork.

About Simon Vance

Simon Vance is an award-winning actor and an AudioFile Golden Voice with over fifty Earphones Awards and thirteen prestigious Audie Awards. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on September 13, 2020

I like Titus Groan very much, but I like Gormenghast more. The visual set pieces are equally vivid, but the style seems less labored, more fluid--less like cubist painting and more like a movie photographed by a cinematographer with a unique and eccentric palette. At first I thought this was princip......more

Goodreads review by Vit on November 06, 2020

Gormenghast is a tale of mysteries… Gormenghast is a story of magic… Gormenghast is written with the mysterious and magical language… Titus is seven. His confines, Gormenghast. Suckled on shadows; weaned, as it were, on webs of ritual: for his ears, echoes, for his eyes, a labyrinth of stone: and yet......more

Goodreads review by J.G. Keely on May 28, 2009

The Gormenghast books are considered to be the beginning of the 'mannerpunk' genre, and along with Tolkien, Moorecock, and Howard, Peake is one of the fathers of the modern Fantasy genre. Mannerpunk is a genre typified by complex psychology, plots driven by character interaction, and a strong sense......more

Goodreads review by Bradley on February 08, 2017

This classic fantasy still feels almost like allegory and real history wrapped around some of the most beautiful prose in literature. Seriously. The prose is really fantastic. The names of things are both evocative and as predictive as shadows upon the wall: outlines and no substance. The same is not......more

Quotes

“[Peake’s books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience.” C. S. Lewis

“This extravagant epic about a labyrinthine castle populated with conniving Dickensian grotesques is the true fantasy classic of our time.” Washington Post Book World 

“Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It is a very, very great work…a classic of our age.” Robertson Davies

“[A] magnificent ediface spun from thin air by a tortured genius.” Liz Jensen, author of The Rapture

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