Wow! eBook
The Angel of the West Window (Dedalus) 2nd Edition
Author(s): Gustav Meyrink (Author)
- Publisher: Dedalus Ltd
- Publication Date: 2 Sept. 2010
- Edition: 2nd
- Language: English
- Print length: 422 pages
- ISBN-10: 1903517818
- ISBN-13: 9781903517819
Book Description
A complex and ambitious novel which centres on the life of the Elizabethan magus, John Dee, in England, Poland and Prague, as it intertwines past and present, dreams and visions, myth and reality in a world of the occult, culminating in the transmutation of physical reality into a higher spiritual existence.
Editorial Reviews
Review
The narrator believes he is becoming possessed by the spirit of his ancestor John Dee. The adventures of Dee and his disreputable colleague, an earless rogue called Edmund Kelley, form a rollicking 16th century variant on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as they con their way across Europe in a flurry of alchemy and conjured spirits. At one point,Kelley even persuades Dee that the success of an occult enterprise depends on his sleeping with Dee’s wife. Past, present, and assorted supernatural dimensions become intertwined in this odd and thoroughly diverting tale. –Anne Billson in The Times
About the Author
Gustav Meyrink (I868-1932) found worldwide critical and commercial acclaim with his first novel The Golem (I9I5), which prior to the Dedalus Meyrink programme has been the only work available in English. It established his reputation as the master of the occult and the grotesque.(He was the German translator of Dickens). His reputation declined in his last years but his work is now being reassessed in Germany & Austria, and he is now considered as one of the most important German language novelists of the 20th century . Dedalus is part of the European-wide movement championing Meyrink’s work. A new translation of The Golem was published by Dedalus in 1995, and the first English translations of The Green Face; Walpurgisnacht, The Angel of the West Window, The White Dominican, The Opal (and other stories), were published by Dedalus during 1991-94 making all of Meyrink’s major work available in English. In 2008 Dedalus published the first English language biography of Gustav Meyrink,Vivo: The Life of Gustav Meyrink by Mike Michell. In 2010 Dedalus published The Dedalus Meyrink Reader, which contained a further collection of Meyrink’s short stories and hitherto unpublished biographical essays.
