Timothy Findley Libri

Il 17 aprile 1912 un uomo di nome Pilgrim tenta di suicidarsi impiccandosi ad un albero. Pochi istanti dopo il ritrovamento, però, il suo cuore ricomincia a battere. Accompagnato dalla sua amata amica, Lady Symbol Quartermaine, Pilgrim viene ricoverato nella clinica psichiatrica di Zurigo diretta da Jung. Con il famoso analista, l'uomo ingaggia una vera e propria battaglia che porta Pilgrim a confessare la sua stupefacente storia: una vicenda che dura da 4000 anni e che include figure storiche come Leonardo da Vinci, Henry James, Oscar Wilde... Pilgrim è pazzo? I suoi ricordi sono il frutto di una mente malata o attestano veramente la sua immortalità?

Ontario 1889. La venticinquenne Ede Kilworth assiste al concerto di un giovane pianista, nella cittadina dove vive. È colpo di fulmine e i due si amano la notte stessa. Il pianista se ne va con una promessa e dopo nove mesi nasce la piccola Lily, affetta da un male strano di origine neurologica che la rende idiosincratica al fuoco. Ma il pianista muore in un incidente e, nove anni dopo, il fratello si presenta per chiedere la mano della donna. Sarà una vita difficile per Ede e soprattutto per la figlia Lily, malata. Tutto viene ricordato dal figlio di Lily, quarant'anni dopo.

Robert Ross, a sensitive nineteen-year-old Canadian officer, goes to war - the War to End All Wars. He finds himself in the nightmare world of trench warfare; of mud and smoke, of chlorine gas and rotting corpses. In this world gone mad, Ross performs a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death. The Wars is quite simply one of the best novels ever written about the First World War.

Published in 1984, Not Wanted on the Voyage is one of Timothy Findley's most imaginative and compelling literary fictions. Findley turns to one of our essential myths: the biblical story of the great Flood, but he doesn't so much retell it as take our common knowledge of the Old Testament tale and give it an extraordinary twist. Here we have Dr. Noah Noyes, diabolical conjuror and dictatorial leader of his helpless little boat-bound band, sure of his total superiority as man, husband, and father, imposing his view of the ways of God on his wife and family. The kind and generous Mrs. Noyes stands in direct contrast to her hard-hearted husband, and then there are the Noyes children: strongman Japeth, every inch his father's son, with his delicate wife, Emma; and the sensitive Ham, every inch his mother's, with his mysterious wife, Lucy (a.k.a. Lucifer, who, having escaped from Hell, has decided to align himself with mankind). Findley, a great lover of cats, also gives us the crotchety Mottyl, making her way through her ninth and final life. Not Wanted on the Voyage is poetic and passionate and bursting with a wide-eyed inventiveness, at once a stunningly contemporary attempt at mythmaking, a grand novel of the power of the imagination, and a thoroughly good read. --Jeffrey Canton

In the final days of the Second World War, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley scrawls his desperate account on the walls and ceilings of his ice-cold prison high in the Austrian Alps. Officers of the liberating army discover his frozen, disfigured corpse and his astonishing testament -- the sordid truth that he alone possessed. Fascinated but horrified, they learn of a dazzling array of characters caught up in scandal and political corruption. The exiled Duke and Duchess of Windsor, von Ribbentrop, Hitler, Charles Lindbergh, Sir Harry Oakes -- all play sinister parts in an elaborate scheme to secure world domination.

"A distilled and refined novel." --Gail Anderson-Dargatz It is Hollywood 1938. A great star is planning a stunning comeback, while another is bent on self-destruction. And, as dark clouds hang ominously over Europe, hordes of Monarch butterflies swarm beautifully but menacingly over Hollywood. Against a colourful backdrop of butterflies and beaches, Timothy Findley skillfully phases reality into nightmare, exploring mothers' relationships to sons, women's relationships to men, beauty's relationship to evil. Blending biting humour with brilliant perceptions of the levels of despair, "The Butterfly Plague" presents the movie world in all its splendour and decay.

Now an important title in the newly redesigned PerennialCanada series, Timothy Findley’s The Piano Man’s Daughter continues to be one of his most popular books ever. The novel’s reissue follows on the heels of Findley’s newest novel,Pilgrim, released in late 1999 and sure to attract even more new readers to the Findley fold. A glorious reverberation of a time when change was reaching a crescendo and yet hope and renewal were always to be found, The Piano Man’s Daughter is the story of Lily Kilworth and her son Charlie, a young piano tuner, who must find answers to the questions that define his life. Who was his father? And, given the swirl of madness enveloping his mother, does he dare become a father himself? Set at the turn of the century and inspired by the history of Findley’s own mother’s family, this is a remarkable novel that sings with love and loss, a wonderful burst of reading pleasure.

The Edgar Award-winning author of The Telling of Tales returns with a psychological thriller set in a Toronto mental hospital. Lilah Kemp, a sometime spiritualist, inadvertently lets Kurtz, the diabolical character from Conrad's Heart of Darkness out of page 92--and can't get him back in.

The Body is that of Calder Maddox, who owned half the world and rented the other half. The Sleuth is Nessa Van Horne, whose photos of the beach on the day of the murder may obscure more than they reveal. The Suspects are the many people who spend their summers at the beautiful Aurora Sands Hotel. Could it be Lily, Calder’s diaphanous mistress? Or Nigel, the perfect civil servant? Or the disappearing chauffeur? Or the mysterious doctor who appears from nowhere?

Spadework was Timothy Findley’s final novel before his death in June 2002. An electric word play of infidelity and morality, it is fitting that the novel is set in Stratford, the town where Findley began his career as an actor. Now in a Perennial Canada edition, Spadework will join Findley’s wonderful body of work, a collection to be enjoyed again and again.Known for his gift in plumbing the depths of the human condition, Findley digs deep in Spadework with a cast of characters, each one motivated by addictions and ambitions, each one very alone. Set in the steamy summer of 1998, events such as the Lewinsky scandal, a hostage-taking in Peru and a severed phone line connect—and disconnect—a story singed by lust, power, adultery and ambition. A bestseller in cloth and a smash hit in mass market, Spadework ’s Perennial edition will appeal to Findley’s legion of literary fans.