Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon: A Novel

Description

Tom Stoppard's first novel, originally published in 1966 just before the premiere of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, is an uproarious fantasy set in modern London. The cast includes a penniless, dandified Malquist with a liveried coach; Malquist's Boswellian biographer, Moon, who frantically scribbles as a bomb ticks in his pocket; a couple of cowboys, one being named Jasper Jones; a lion who's banned from the Ritz; an Irishman on a donkey claiming to be the Risen Christ; and three irresistible women.

"Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon takes places in dream-London, where everything is seen through a haze of despair, and cowboys and a coach-and-pair and a pet lion wander with innumerable others through the plot, giving it a kind of child-like surrealism. It manages to be sad without being sentimental, and to give its fantasies a wit and exactness that make them fruitful and rewarding."