Dunbar
Published on 5. October 2017
224 pages
978-1-78109-040-4 (ISBN)
Description
From the author of the Patrick Melrose novels, now a major Sky Atlantic television series starring Benedict Cumberbatch
Henry Dunbar, the once all-powerful head of a global media corporation, is not having a good day. In his dotage he handed over care of the corporation to his two eldest daughters, Abby and Megan. But relations quickly soured, leaving him to doubt the wisdom of past decisions.
Now imprisoned in a care home in the Lake District with only a demented alcoholic comedian as company, Dunbar starts planning his escape. As he flees into the hills, his family is hot on his heels. Who will find him first, his beloved youngest daughter, Florence, or the tigresses Abby and Megan, so keen to divest him of his estate?
Henry Dunbar, the once all-powerful head of a global media corporation, is not having a good day. In his dotage he handed over care of the corporation to his two eldest daughters, Abby and Megan. But relations quickly soured, leaving him to doubt the wisdom of past decisions.
Now imprisoned in a care home in the Lake District with only a demented alcoholic comedian as company, Dunbar starts planning his escape. As he flees into the hills, his family is hot on his heels. Who will find him first, his beloved youngest daughter, Florence, or the tigresses Abby and Megan, so keen to divest him of his estate?
Reviews / Votes
St Aubyn has a natural talent for keeping you on the edge of your seat... His prose has an easy charm that masks a ferocious, searching intellect * The Times * Malevolently enjoyable... A fable of fatherly neglect and daughterly cruelty * Financial Times * Deeply affecting...and funny * Observer * Powerful... Entertaining * Spectator * Of all the novelist and play matches in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, that of Edward St Aubyn with King Lear seems the finest. Shakespeare's blackest, most surreal and hectic tragedy sharpened by one of our blackest, more surreal and hectic wits... It's an enticing prospect... His Lear is Henry Dunbar, the head of an international media corporation - like Conrad Black or Rupert Murdoch - and is brilliantly awful... The other characters, even minor ones, are also wittily and cleverly updated -- Kate Clanchy * Guardian * He is an inspired choice to retell King Lear for Hogarth Shakespeare's anniversary series. Dunbar emerges as one of the finest contributions in a line-up glittering with literary stars...He has transplanted the heart of the story into the present and made it feel remarkably authentic -- Stephanie Merritt * Observer * A piercing portrait of existential agony... savagely acute -- Anthony Cummins * Daily Mail * Edward St Aubyn, in his powerful new novel Dunbar, applies the oxyacetylene brilliance and cauterisation of his prose to bear on the tragic endgame of a family's internecine struggle for control of a global fortune. St Aubyn is a connoisseur of depravity, yet also shows he cherishes the possibility of redemption... An Aubynesque simile can brighten a grey passage... Most of the novel is harsh; all of it is entertaining -- Patrick Skene Catling * Spectator * St Aubyn is excellent on the characters' psychology... powerful and moving -- Anthony Gardner * Mail on Sunday * Malevolently enjoyable... The scenes that feel most real, interestingly, are those that are most fantastical, when we are drawn inside the chaos of Dunbar's unravelling mind... Here the language feels sculpted and precise, Dunbar's obsessive solipsism both violent and convincing... St Aubyn's talent for brittle one-liners is as lethal as ever -- Andrew Dickson * Financial Times *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
File size
1,61 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-78109-040-4 (9781781090404)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Person
Edward St Aubyn was born in London. His internationally acclaimed Patrick Melrose novels are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother's Milk (winner of the Prix Femina etranger and shortlisted for the Booker Prize) and At Last. The series was made into a BAFTA award-winning Sky Atlantic TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role. St Aubyn is also the author of A Clue to the Exit, On the Edge (shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize), Lost for Words (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Dunbar and Double Blind.
