The Wolf & Taurus

Description

For the first time, a combined edition of the breathtaking, brilliantly imagined The Wolf, and Taurus 'I am the wolf, taker of life- the predator. I attack with my eyes open and see death bright and fierce leap in the glance of my prey'In a bleak winter landscape a wolf is starved and weakening. He is the predator, but the harshness of nature, the death that stalks all of the wild forest, beings to challenge his supremacy, and his understanding of himself.'I can see myself - I can see the large black shape planted on short legs, the thick shoulders and neck and the huge broad head with horns pointing skyward. I swish my tail and snort and stamp and I can see a bull, doing these things'Under a blazing sun a bull paces back and forth, his skin flickering in the heat. Weighed down by his own mass, his senses are dulled by the dust and lethargy of the farm. A boy tends him from a distance, and in this boy he senses the possibility of a different path- of swirls of colour and movement, of his own power and strength - a premonition of what he might create through violence.In these two novellas, presented here in one edition for the first time, Joseph Smith transports the reader wholly into the mind of an animal, exploring the violence of the forest and the bull-ring from a new perspective, in writing both immediate and incandescent.

Joseph Smith is the author of The Wolf and Taurus. He lives in London.

[On The Wolf :] He is an intriguing narrator, brough to life in lean, elegant and rather beautiful prose * Guardian * [On The Wolf: ] It's convincing... Give that alpha male an alpha for eloquence -- John Sutherland * The Times * Like nothing you have ever read, except perhaps William Blake's daunting vision as articulated in 'The Tyger'... There is a wonderful, soaring artistry at work... Taurus is a subtle morality play; beautiful, relentless and unforgettable -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times * Beautiful and cruel, ancient and new, it expands on Smith's previous novella, The Wolf, by adding more human cruelty into the mix. As a bull gradually awakens into its true self, its appointment with the corrida grows ever closer. It's a stunning but uncomfortable read and one Jill feels absolutely privileged to have read * The Bookbag *