Titus Awakes: The Lost Book of Gormenghast

Description

The recently rediscovered manuscript of the sequel to The Gormenghast Trilogy. Published to tie in with the centenary of Mervyn Peake's birth. In Titus Awakes the 77th Earl of Groan leaves the crumbling castle of Gormenghast and finds the larger world even stranger than his birthplace. Confronted by elemental and human threats - snowstorms, shipwrecks and attempts on his life - Titus' bravery is tested and he must fight to free himself from the claims of his past. Peake began this fourth and final volume of the Gormenghast stories but he died having only written a few pages. Using notes and the fragments he left behind, his wife, the painter and writer Maeve Gilmore, has created a richly imagined sequel that fans of The Gormenghast Trilogy will delight in.

Born in 1918, Maeve Gilmore was a painter, sculptor and writer. She married Mervyn Peake, author of the Gormenghast novels, in 1937 and they had three children. She is the author of A World Away, an account of her life with Peake. Anthony Burgess wrote of that book, 'It is impossible not to be moved by Maeve Gilmore's memoir...The moral of Gilmore's exquisite and poignant book is that life is hell, but we had better be grateful for the conoslations of love and art'. She died in August 2003. Mervyn Peake was a playwright, painter, poet, illustrator, short story writer, and designer of theatrical costumes, as well as a novelist. Among his many books are Gormenghast, Titus Groan and Titus Alone.

Titus Awakes is a treasure salvaged from the ruins * New Statesman * Peake does not, as some have said, defy classification; rather, he is beyond classification in any single genre, and therein perhaps lies his genius. In his centenary year it is to be hoped that the latest surge of interest in his enormous range of work will finally help to place him in his rightful position as one of Britain's most brilliant, original and creative figures * Times Literary Supplement * A century after his birth, the gothic surrealism of Peake's fantasy world still attracts new fans * Independent *