Cole the Magnificent
Published on 15. August 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
432 pages
978-1-78463-278-6 (ISBN)
Description
The orphan Cole wanders the world, seeking the fabled Underground City which he has promised his love Sigrid he will find. Somewhere else entirely, Niven sits in a palace garden taking lessons in astronomy and architecture, dreaming up ways to escape being married off to one of her father's friends.
Cole's story is pieced together from folk songs and fragments as he travels ever onwards towards his destiny: a new life even stranger than the one before. Niven too will learn what it means to leave the garden of childhood. Their world is one of witchcraft and wishing, wisdom and regret, as they slowly learn how much it is possible to love, and suffer for the sake of love.
Comic, grotesque, lyrical, and immensely readable, Tony Williams's fantasy picaresque is a reader's delight. A sweeping yarn through the darkest of ages, filled with rogues, lovers, murderers, swindlers, and saints.
Cole's story is pieced together from folk songs and fragments as he travels ever onwards towards his destiny: a new life even stranger than the one before. Niven too will learn what it means to leave the garden of childhood. Their world is one of witchcraft and wishing, wisdom and regret, as they slowly learn how much it is possible to love, and suffer for the sake of love.
Comic, grotesque, lyrical, and immensely readable, Tony Williams's fantasy picaresque is a reader's delight. A sweeping yarn through the darkest of ages, filled with rogues, lovers, murderers, swindlers, and saints.
Reviews / Votes
Cole the Magnificent is a picaresque, fantastical tale of the life (or lives) of a man, Cole, following his adventures as he progresses through a mythical pre-Norman Britain, from adolescence to old age, and beyond. It is episodic and poetic, by turns evoking Norse saga tradition and then putting post-modern quotation marks around it. Hard to encapsulate, it is sweeping, tricksy, violent, elegant, substantial, trifling, virtuoso, whimsical, colourful, deadpan, infuriating and nonsensical. It is, in its way, brilliant, but may not be for everyone. -- Bernard Hughes * The Arts Desk *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Illustrations
Not illustrated
Dimensions
Height: 128 mm
Width: 198 mm
Thickness: 36 mm
Weight
366 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78463-278-6 (9781784632786)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Tony Williams's All the Bananas I've Never Eaten won the Saboteur Award for best short story collection. His poetry includes The Corner of Arundel Lane and Charles Street and The Midlands. He lived in Sheffield for more than a decade before moving to rural Northumberland. He works in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.