A Harlot's Progress - Brossura

Dabydeen, David

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0099288729 ISBN 13: 9780099288725

Casa editrice: Vintage, 2000

Riassunto

A HARLOT'S PROGRESS reinvents William Hogarth's famous painting of 1732 which tells the story of a whore, a Jewish merchant, a magistrate and a quack doctor bound together by sexual and financial greed. Dabydeen's novel endows Hogarth's characters with alternative potential lives, redeeming them for their cliched status as predators or victims. The protagonist - in Hogarth, a black slave boy, in Dabydeen, London's oldest black inhabitant - is forced to tell his story to the Abolitionists in return for their charity. He refuses however to supply parade of grievances, and to give a simplistic account of beatings, sexual abuses, etc. He will not embark upon yet another fictional journey into the dark nature of slavery for the voyeuristic delight of the English reader. Instead, the old man ties the reader up in knots as deftly as a harlot her client: he spins a tale of myths, half-truths and fantasies; recreating Africa and eighteenth-century London in startlingly poetic ways. What matters to him is the odyssey into poetry, the rich texture of his narrative, not its truthfulness. In this, his fourth novel, David Dabydeen opens up history to myriad imaginary interpretations, repopulating a vanished world with a strange, defiantly vivid and compassionate humanity.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"David Dabydeen's new novel takes as its starting point Hogarth's painting of 1732...and sets out to release the people it represents - prostitute, merchant, quack doctor and slave boy - from easy moralism, both the artist's and our own... Dabydeen has an imaginative mastery of the period, and can render it a hundred ways" (Observer)

"Exhilarating...Beguiling and provocative" (The Times)

"The best of the younger generation of Caribbean novelists" (Penelope Lively)

"His strong vision... suggests that, for the recreation of lost meaning, it is necessary to strike off the fetters of narrative, and be released into poetry." (Hilary Mantel The Independent)

Descrizione del libro:

Can we ever know the truth about the past? David Dabydeen liberates the black slave boy from Hogarth’s 1732 engravings to tell his own story in an exhilarating, vivid series of half-truths, myths and fantasies.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Vintage
• Data di pubblicazione: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0099288729
• ISBN 13: 9780099288725
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 288