The Image of a Drawn Sword
Published on 5. October 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
154 pages
978-1-5098-5585-8 (ISBN)
Description
The calm of Reynard Langrish's quietly predictable life is shattered when, on a night of rain-swept storm, a stranger - a young soldier called Captain Archer - appears at his remote Kentish cottage. He takes Langrish to an ancient hill fort and introduces him to the men under his command, all of whom share a mysterious tattoo - two snakes entwined around a drawn sword - and are engaged in preparations to defend against a nameless menace, referred to only as 'the Emergency'.
As the dreamlike narrative rapidly accelerates into Kafkaesque nightmare, Langrish is drawn into a world where illusion, paranoia, and reality unite with lethal consequences, and disorienting shifts of time and perception culminate in a terrifying moment of pure horror.
Originally published in 1950, The Image of a Drawn Sword is steeped in the themes and images that occupy much of Brooke's writing - the relentlessness of time, suppressed homosexuality, condemned love, self-hatred, and futility; and, above all, an England that was both real and uniquely his own, a mystical, half-known natural world.
'In its way not inferior to Kafka . . . [it has] a haunting, sinister quality' - Anthony Powell
'Seldom have naturalism and fantasy been more strangely merged' - Elizabeth Bowen
'He is subtle as the devil' - John Betjeman
'The skill and intensity of the writing made peculiarly haunting this cry of complaint on behalf of a bewildered Man' - Pamela Hansford Johnson, Daily Telegraph
As the dreamlike narrative rapidly accelerates into Kafkaesque nightmare, Langrish is drawn into a world where illusion, paranoia, and reality unite with lethal consequences, and disorienting shifts of time and perception culminate in a terrifying moment of pure horror.
Originally published in 1950, The Image of a Drawn Sword is steeped in the themes and images that occupy much of Brooke's writing - the relentlessness of time, suppressed homosexuality, condemned love, self-hatred, and futility; and, above all, an England that was both real and uniquely his own, a mystical, half-known natural world.
'In its way not inferior to Kafka . . . [it has] a haunting, sinister quality' - Anthony Powell
'Seldom have naturalism and fantasy been more strangely merged' - Elizabeth Bowen
'He is subtle as the devil' - John Betjeman
'The skill and intensity of the writing made peculiarly haunting this cry of complaint on behalf of a bewildered Man' - Pamela Hansford Johnson, Daily Telegraph
Reviews / Votes
A remarkable Kafkaesque tour de force for a writer who had, in fact, never read Kafka when the book was written. -- Anthony Powell He is subtle as the devil -- John Betjeman The skill and intensity of the writing made peculiarly haunting this cry of complaint on behalf of a bewildered Man -- Pamela Hansford Johnson * Daily Telegraph * This is an uneasy, adult fairy story, composed in a minor key so personal and cryptic that its mysteries admit no real resolution. Once read, however, it's extremely hard to forget. -- Tim Martin * Telegraph * Seldom have naturalism and fantasy been more strangely merged . . . Mr Brooke is a great writer -- Elizabeth BowenMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Pan Macmillan
Target group
Interest Age: From 18 years
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 133 mm
Thickness: 9 mm
Weight
184 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5098-5585-8 (9781509855858)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Jocelyn Brooke was born in 1908 on the south coast and educated at Bedales and Worcester College, Oxford. He worked in London for a while, then in the family wine-merchants in Folkestone, Kent. In 1939, Brooke enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and reenlisted after the war as a Regular. The critical success of The Military Orchid (1948), the first volume of his autobiographical Orchid trilogy, provided the opportunity to buy himself out, and he immediately settled down to write, publishing some fifteen titles between 1948 and 1955, including the successive volumes of the trilogy, A Mine of Serpents (1949) and The Goose Cathedral (1950). His other published work includes two volumes of poetry, the novels The Image of a Drawn Sword (1950) and The Dog at Clambercrown (1955), as well as some technical works on botany. A perceptive reviewer, Brooke wrote critiques of Aldous Huxley, Elizabeth Bowen, Ronald Firbank, and John Betjeman. He also introduced and edited the journals and published works of Denton Welch. Jocelyn Brooke died in 1966.