Rites of Passage: Introduced by Annie Proulx
Set during an early-nineteenth-century voyage to Australia, the novel follows the young Englishman Edmund Talbot as a sealed shipboard society is shaken by desire, class tension, and moral hypocrisy. The sea journey becomes a test of human character.
Work Information
A journey at sea strips away the comforts that usually hide human nature.
As the first volume of William Golding’s Sea Trilogy, the novel lets a shipboard voyage steadily erode the passengers’ relationships and self-control. It works both as a psychological drama and as a historical novel shaped by colonial tension.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Faber & Faber
- Published
- 2022-04-07
- Pages
- 336 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.9 x 2 x 19.8 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780571371648
- ISBN-10
- 0571371647
- Price
- 3088 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Sea Adventures
Introduced by Annie Proulx, lose yourself in an epic naval journey in this Booker Prize-winning historical novel: the first in the acclaimed Sea Trilogy by the author of Lord of the Flies. I grow a little crazy, I think, like all men at sea who live too close to each other and too close thereby to all that is monstrous under the sun and moon . . . Edmund Talbot is sailing to Australia in the early nineteenth century. In his journal, he records mounting tensions aboard the ancient, stinking warship, as officers, sailors, soldiers and emigrants jostle in the cramped darkness below decks. But when something happens to Reverend Colley that brings him into a 'hell of self-degradation', it seems that shame is a force deadlier than the sea itself . . . 'It is the emotional veracity of life at sea that powers Golding's exceptional writing ... The fury, mystery and challenge .' Kate Mosse 'Golding writes the past as present [with] uncanny skill and tremendous intuition.' Ben Okri 'A master at the full stretch of his age and wisdom - necessary, provoking, urgent, rich, complex and rare.' The Times 'Golding's best and most accessible story since Lord of the Flies .' Melvyn Bragg 'An extraordinary novel.' Observer 'A truly noble achievement'. Patrick O'Brien To The Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy - Book One
William Golding (1911 - 1993 ) was born in Cornwall and educated at Marlborough Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford. Before becoming a writer, he was an actor, small-boat sailor, musician and schoolteacher. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy and took part in the D-Day operation and liberation of Holland. Lord of the Flies , his first novel, was turned down by several publishers but rescued from the 'reject pile' at Faber and published in 1954. It became a modern classic selling millions of copies, translated into 44 languages and made into a film by Peter Brook in 1963. Golding wrote eleven other novels, a play and two essay collections. He won the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage in 1980 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988 and died in 1993. www.william-golding.co.uk
Reviews
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Best for those who already have some affinity with the sea/sea-faring/the Navy.
It was an amusing 'read', and I enjoyed it, though I doubt it would be everyone's "cup of tea". Who knows?
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read all three volumes, great reading
Yes and yes again !
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Overlong.
I expected to enjoy an interesting novel in regard to Edmund's seagoing experiences, but found the book is overlong. Events are far too drawn out to hold one's interest.
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Great memory’s of my Navy days
Nice was a nice touch and the initiation over the equator was a great recall of some great memories “Shell Back”
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Disappointing
I got the book having seen the movie based on the film of the trilogy but won't bother to get the other two as the writing is turgid and boring.
Related Literary Awards
- Booker Prize Edition 12 (1980) ・Winner