John Spurling

The Classical Greek intellectual and mythic tradition pervades nearly every aspect of our modern Western civilization. We see its ideas in our logic and our approach to science, as well as our politics, architecture, and art. And the fundamental myths of the Greeks, as refined by Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, and others, still resonate even thousands of years later as ageless stories at the core of our literature and culture. They teach us about heroism and mortality, human behavior and motivation; they are fictional tales that show us our humanity in ways reality never could. In Arcadian Nights, novelist John Spurling revisits many of these crucial myths, retelling them and bringing them to new life. Spurling, a resident of the Peloponnesian Coast himself, shows us his reimagining of the stories of classic characters like Agamemnon, Theseus, and Apollo, among others. Where details of certain stories have been lost to time, he's infused them with his own; where discrepancy and obscurity cloud the narratives, Spurling has added scene, dialogue, and context, while always staying true to the spirit of the original myth. The result is a vibrant collection of old tales made new again by a gifted author, who shows us that Greek myths hold as much power and resonance today as they ever have.

The Greek Myths Reimagined

Arcadian Nights

Gods, Women and Men from Greek Myth

Arcadian Days: Gods, Women and Men from Greek Myth - From the Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

Pursuing an intellectual life to escape doubts about his service under Mongol conquerors in the turbulent final years of the Yuan Dynasty, low-level bureaucrat and artist Wang Meng interacts with master painters of the period and works as a military strategist for a fierce woman warrior.

A Novel

The Ten Thousand Things

Graham Greene is an immensely popular as well as powerful and idiosyncratic writer. His leading characters are murderers, spies, fugitives and outsiders and his most typical plot is that of the hunter and the hunted. In this book, originally published in 1983, John Spurling sets about tracking down the author behind the protagonists. Beginning with an analysis of the patterns of Greene’s mind as revealed in the 40 or so works of fiction, drama, criticism, travel and autobiography he has published, the author goes on to explore the way the patterns are modified from the political thrillers of the 1930s through the ‘Catholic’ novels of the 1940s and 1950s to the post-war comedies and ‘Third World’ novels. Greene is the odd man out of a generation of remarkable writers born around the turn of the 20th Century who lived through the destruction of the 19th century world order. John Spurling’s highly original study tells us why.

Graham Greene

Julius Bryant

Sculptures by Anthony Caro

The Trojan War

"In the turbulent final years of the Yuan Dynasty, Wang Meng is a low-level bureaucrat, employed by the government of Mongol conquerors established by the Kublai Khan. Though he wonders about his own complicity wit this regime-the Mongols, after all, are invaders-he prefers not to dwell on his official duties, choosing instead to live the life of the mind. Wang is an extraordinarily gifted artist. His paintings are at once delicate and confident; in them, one can see the wind blowing through the trees, the water rushing through rocky valleys, the infinite expanse of China's natural beauty. But this is not a time for sitting still, and as The Ten Thousand Things unfolds, we follow Wang as he travels through an empire in turmoil. In his wanderings, he encounters, among many memorable characters, other master painters of the period, including the austere eccentric Ni Zan, a fierce female warrior known as the White Tigress who will recruit him as a military strategist, and an ugly young Buddhist monk who rises from beggary to extraordinary heights. The Ten Thousand Things is rich with exquisite observations, and John Spurling endows every description-every detail-with the precision and depth that the real-life Wang Meng brought to his painting. But it is also a novel of fated meetings, grand battles, and riveting drama, and in its seamless fusion of the epic and the intimate, it achieves a truly singular beauty. A novel that deserves to be compared to the classic Chinese novels that inspired it, The Ten Thousand Things is nothing short of a literary event"--

Briefly traces Greene's life, examines the major themes of his novels, and discusses his outlook on life.

Beneath the floorboards of a ruined house, an 18th-century memoir is discovered. It reveals the life story of William Congreve, the acclaimed English playwright. The lost manuscript is penned by his faithful servant, Jeremy, who tells how they lived together through fierce political division and triumphal nationalism in that era of war with France, the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution. Upon his death a monument in Stowe is erected to honour Mr Congreve. Atop a slender pyramid sits a monkey peering into a mirror, a court wit seeing reflected the ironies of polite society folding in on itself as Whigs and Tories feud with scant ground for compromise. Through the prisms of memory and art, award-winning author John Spurling reimagines this tumultuous period and brings to life historical figures Dryden, Vanbrugh, Swift, Pope and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as never before.

John Spurling

Books

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