Book Information
- Publisher
- Random House Publishing Group
- Published
- 1996-08-27
- Pages
- 304 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.89 x 1.68 x 20.83 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780449912164
- ISBN-10
- 9780449912164
- Price
- 2933 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Mystery & Thrillers/Thrillers/Psychological & Suspense
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRE ÉTRANGER The Centaur is a modern retelling of the legend of Chiron, the noblest and wisest of the centaurs, who, painfully wounded yet unable to die, gave up his immortality on behalf of Prometheus. In the retelling, Olympus becomes small-town Olinger High School; Chiron is George Caldwell, a science teacher there; and Prometheus is Caldwell’s fifteen-year-old son, Peter. Brilliantly conflating the author’s remembered past with tales from Greek mythology, John Updike translates Chiron’s agonized search for relief into the incidents and accidents of three winter days spent in rural Pennsylvania in 1947. The result, said the judges of the National Book Award, is “a courageous and brilliant account of a conflict in gifts between an inarticulate American father and his highly articulate son.”
John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, in 1932. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker . His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal. In 2007 he received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Updike died in January 2009.
Reviews
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As good as described
The book was delivered as expected. It was in a good condition.
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Great purchase.
A master craftsman of the written word. Enjoyed every page.
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I didn't get the point
Only 4 stars for one of the most renowned books in english literature? I admire John Updike enormously and have read most of his books. This novel I found touching and - of course - excellently written. But what with the references to Greek Mythology? Obviously there are several parallel lines in the story. Not having studied Greek, I openly admit that I did not get the point.
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Elegant words
Updike writes so gorgeously throughout this book that it is often like trying to see after looking at the sun, dazzled and disoriented by the light, swooning from ephiphanies of metaphors. In essence it's a father/son book,set in a time when a dollar was worth something.
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Its all greek
A knowledge of the classics helps to really enjoy The Centaur. But the evocation and atmosphere around this human situation are created through realism mixed with the poetic.
Related Literary Awards
- Pulitzer Prize Edition 48 (1964) ・Winner