Charles Palliser è celebrato per il suo uso magistrale di strutture narrative complesse, spesso labirintiche, che immergono il lettore in mondi intricatamente costruiti. Il suo stile è caratterizzato da una profonda esplorazione della psicologia dei personaggi e da un linguaggio preciso che evoca l'atmosfera di epoche passate. Ambientate in scrupolosi contesti storici, le sue storie esaminano temi di identità, memoria e verità nascoste. Le opere di Palliser sono un invito a un viaggio intellettuale ed emotivo che sfida i confini tra realtà e finzione.
An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary--a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century -- London itself." You read the first page and down you wonderfully fall, into a long, large, wide world of fiction." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Our Review A Historical Murder Mystery of the Highest Order In 1990, Charles Palliser made a spectacular debut with The Quincunx , a huge, densely plotted book that illuminates, in extraordinary detail, virtually every level of English society in the early 19th century. In his fourth novel, The Unburied, Palliser turns to the late Victorian era to give us an equally authoritative reconstruction of the past and a tightly compressed narrative filled with treachery, drama, and interconnected mysteries. The novel opens with a brief preface in which Philip Barthram, editor of the manuscript we're about to read, travels to Geneva for an enigmatic encounter with an old, dying woman. At the end of this encounter -- which makes numerous references to events and people we know nothing about -- the narrative shifts abruptly, taking us into "The Courtine Account," a memoir written by Cambridge historian Edward Courtine. The memoir recounts Courtine's 1881 visit to the cathedral town of Thurchester, site of the mysteries that will gradually dominate the novel. Ostensibly, Courtine has come to Thurchester to visit his former college roommate, Austin Fickling. Courtine and Austin parted bitterly 20 years before and hope to effect a belated reconciliation. Courtine also hopes to unearth a manuscript -- rumored to reside in the Thurchester library -- that will shed new light on his academic specialty, the reign of King Alfred, medieval ruler of Wessex. As he attempts to follow both his personal and professional agendas, Edward finds himself embroiled in a pair of unresolved mysteries. One concerns the 200-year-old murders of William Burgoyne and Launcelot Freeth, whose violent deaths continue to generate controversy and speculation. The other concerns the brutal killing of a local banker, a killing that takes place -- or appears to take place -- just minutes after Courtine and Austin have visited the banker's home. As the novel progresses, the details of the two crimes echo each other with an eerie frequency. With unobtrusive skill, Palliser leads us through a cumulatively fascinating labyrinth composed of fact, rumor, legend, and supposition. Within this labyrinth, objective "truth" proves to be an illusive, perhaps unattainable goal. But Courtine, a historian who believes in the power of the imagination, continues to pursue that goal. In the course of his pursuit, which is never wholly successful, he finds himself forced to reassess the central elements of his life: his embattled relationship with Austin Fickling, the painful failure of his marriage, two decades before, and the unperceived weaknesses of his own character. Admirers of Charles Dickens , Wilkie Collins , John Fowles , and Umberto Eco should take this novel to their hearts. The Unburied is exciting, audacious, mysterious, moving, and intellectually challenging, all at once. Like The Quincunx, it speaks clearly and directly to the modern sensibility and leaves a lingering aftertaste behind. --Bill Sheehan Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub , At the Foot of the Story Tree , has recently been published by Subterranean Press ( www.subterraneanpress.com ).
From the author of the international bestsellerThe Quincunx When his nation is invaded and occupied by a brutal enemy, a man persuades his wife that they should give temporary shelter to a young girl who is at school with their daughter. He has no idea that the girl belongs to a community against whom the invader intends to commit genocide. Days stretch into weeks and then months while the enemy's pitiless hatred of the girl's community puts all of the family in danger. Nobody outside the family can be trusted with the dangerous secret and the threat from outside creates internal conflicts that put the family's unity at risk.
At once a hypnotic murder mystery, scathing literary parody, soap opera, and brilliant pastiche, Betrayals is an astonishing virtuouso performance by a modern master of literary gamesmanship in the tradition of Vladimir Nabokov and John Barth. The novel unforlds in a series of seemingly unrelated narratives, each written in a different style -- indeed, in a different genre. There is an obituary for a Scottish scientist and Nobel Prize winner, written by a colleague who clearly relishes his death. Early in the century, a train in the Scottish Highlands heads down the wrong track during a winter snowstorm, and the passengers are forced to abandon the train, resulting in the death -- or is it murder? -- of one of them. An inane publisher's reader summarizes the plot of a tacky hospital romance novel, which ends in a gory murder all too reminiscent of Jack the Ripper. Even a report on a contemporary academic controversy explodes into a scandal of plagiarism, shattered reputations, paranoia, and suicide -- or is it murder made to look as such? As Palliser deftly teases out each new situation, it becomes clear that they are all variations on a single outrageous theme: a distinguished figure in some intellectual pursuit -- science, literature, academia -- becomes obsessed with the success of a rival and schemes his demise, only to botch the job out of sheer monomania. Like the scorpion that stings itself to death, each plotter becomes a victim of his own plot; each betrayer changes places with the betrayed in an intricate dance of deception, revenge, and revelation. A challenging, engrossing, utterly original work of art, Betrayals is also pure joy to read -- a book that will make you laugh out loud, turn pages madly in pursuit of the next plot twist, and above all, marvel at the supreme ingenuity of a fictional puzzle in which the unlikeliest pieces fit together perfectly.
Rond 1800 raakt een Londense jongen bij de jacht op het testament van zijn grootvader verzeild in een net van intriges.
Où l’on retrouve l’art intranquille de Charles Palliser, l’auteur du Quinconce (Phébus, 1993) – ce roman labyrinthe en cinq volumes qui explora, comme jamais peut-être, les voies du crime, et qui fut un succès mondial. Dans une petite ville d’Angleterre à la Belle Époque, quelques messieurs des mieux respectables, sous le regard d’un enquêteur féru d’histoire ancienne, se retrouvent avec un cadavre sur les bras... et doivent avouer au monde les ordinaires turpitudes de la vie. Un récit féroce, relevé d’un humour plutôt sombre, où Palliser confirme la pente traîtresse de son talent ; et nous rappelle à sa façon, comme Hitchcock hier, comme Wilkie Collins avant-hier, que l’existence est d’abord un mystère – un espace piégé où tout conspire à égarer le chercheur de vérité (un meurtre peut toujours en cacher un autre). Chacun d’entre nous se résume à une énigme, nous chuchote l’auteur, orfèvre en la matière : une énigme qui n’aura chance de s’éclairer à nos yeux qu’autant que nous acceptons de surmonter notre peur du noir.
