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Product Description
Product Description
Three short novels show Golding at his subtle, ironic, mysterious best. The Scorpion God depicts a challenge to primal authority as the god-ruler of an ancient civilization lingers near death. Clonk Clonk is a graphic account of a crippled youth's triumph over his tormentors in a primitive matriarchal society. Envoy Extraordinary is a tale of Imperial Rome where the emperor loves his illegitimate son more than his own arrogant, loutish heir.
About the Author
William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911 and was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. Before he became a schoolmaster he was an actor, a lecturer, a small-boat sailor and a musician. A now rare volume, Poems, appeared in 1934. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy and saw action against battleships, and also took part in the pursuit of the Bismarck. He finished the war as a Lieutenant in command of a rocket ship, which was off the French coast for the D-Day invasion, and later at the island of Welcheren. After the war he returned to Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury and was there when his first novel, Lord of the Flies, was published in 1954. He gave up teaching in 1961. Lord of the Flies was filmed by Peter Brook in 1963. Golding listed his hobbies as music, chess, sailing, archaeology and classical Greek (which he taught himself). Many of these subjects appear in his essay collections The Hot Gates and A Moving Target. He won the Booker Prize for his novel Rites of Passage in 1980, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988. He died at his home in the summer of 1993. The Double Tongue, a novel left in draft at his death, was published in June 1995.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
Three different stories in three different ages. They are all about an individual in a moral conflict with society or with its rulers. In the novels written by William Golding -from "Lord of the flies" to "The Double Tongue"- there is always a conflict with any form of society, even the most primitive and even among children ('Lord of the Flies').
This three short novels set in varying places and times exhibit the manifold talents of a writer who has been called the most original and imaginative of his generation. The title piece depicts a challenge to primal authority as the god-ruler of an ancient civilization lingers near death. "Clonk Clonk" is a convincing account of a crippled youth's triumph over his tormentors in a primitive society. "Envoy Extraordinary" is a tale of Imperial Rome and of the poetic illegitimate son of the emperor, whom the emperor loves more than he does his own arrogant, loutish heir.
This is Golding at his best
This three short novels set in varying places and times exhibit the manifold talents of a writer who has been called the most original and imaginative of his generation. The title piece depicts a challenge to primal authority as the god-ruler of an ancient civilization lingers near death. "Clonk Clonk" is a convincing account of a crippled youth's triumph over his tormentors in a primitive society. "Envoy Extraordinary" is a tale of Imperial Rome and of the poetic illegitimate son of the emperor, whom the emperor loves more than he does his own arrogant, loutish heir.
This is Golding at his best
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Not an inspiring trio of stories, though I would have expected the ancient world backdrop to make them appeal to me. The ancient Egypt one I managed to get through with a bit of a struggle, but the prehistoric one I gave up on after only a few pages, the Roman one a bit further (I'm spoiled by Saylor and McCullough). They lack the naturalism I expect from historical fiction that I like (and which is present in the author's Lord of the Flies).
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Ancient lights
24 Oct 2000
Format:Paperback
Not quite three short novels, but three long stories - "The Scorpion God", set in ancient Egypt; "Clonk Clonk", set in Africa somewhere around the Dawn of Man; and "Envoy Extraordinary", set during the late Roman Empire. All are distinguished by Golding's glorious if occasionally difficult style - it's sometimes hard to discern precisely what is going on, but that's because the author is trying to project you into the consciousness of people who are fundamentally different from you - pre-Christian, pre-industrial, pre-rational and in one case prehistoric. All three stories deal with the emergence of new forms of consciousness and hence, new forms of society - in the first, we see the vague beginnings of the Pharaohs; in the second, perhaps, the beginning of the sex war; in the third (in many ways the least difficult of the three) the brilliantly ironic fate of a few ideas which were centuries, not years, before their time. In "Envoy Extraordinary" only - the story set closest to modern times - the attempted change of consciousness does not succeed, is deliberately repressed - or rather, removed until later. There's a real sting in this tale, just as logical, just as inevitable and far less predictable than the ending of Golding's excellent Pincher Martin; the barbs in "Clonk Clonk" and "The Scorpion God" are a bit more subtle and may take longer to sink in, but you'll feel them all right.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A Lesson in Anthropology
12 Jan 2009
Format:Paperback
Three short stories set in ancient Egypt,Rome and stoneage times all exploring mans ambivilent relatoinship with nature;the rational and reasoning of man always being repressed by our over weening need for rituals and superstitious explanations.
Each tale needs to be read in one sitting for the whole effect to hit;Golding is not the sort of writer where you can read a couple of pages then go back to later. His writing has a cumulative effect, and his anthropological observations are acute.
My particular favourite was 'Clonk Clonk' as it was very much in the vein of (to me) his greatest work,'The Inheritors'.
Each tale needs to be read in one sitting for the whole effect to hit;Golding is not the sort of writer where you can read a couple of pages then go back to later. His writing has a cumulative effect, and his anthropological observations are acute.
My particular favourite was 'Clonk Clonk' as it was very much in the vein of (to me) his greatest work,'The Inheritors'.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Individual vs Society.
28 May 2009
Format:Hardcover
Three different stories in three different ages. They are all about an individual in a moral conflict with society or with its rulers. In the novels written by William Golding -from "Lord of the flies" to "The Double Tongue"- there is always a conflict with any form of society, even the most primitive and even among children ('Lord of the Flies').
This three short novels set in varying places and times exhibit the manifold talents of a writer who has been called the most original and imaginative of his generation. The title piece depicts a challenge to primal authority as the god-ruler of an ancient civilization lingers near death. "Clonk Clonk" is a convincing account of a crippled youth's triumph over his tormentors in a primitive society. "Envoy Extraordinary" is a tale of Imperial Rome and of the poetic illegitimate son of the emperor, whom the emperor loves more than he does his own arrogant, loutish heir.
This is Golding at his best
.Lord of the Flies (50th Anniversary Edition)The Double Tongue
This three short novels set in varying places and times exhibit the manifold talents of a writer who has been called the most original and imaginative of his generation. The title piece depicts a challenge to primal authority as the god-ruler of an ancient civilization lingers near death. "Clonk Clonk" is a convincing account of a crippled youth's triumph over his tormentors in a primitive society. "Envoy Extraordinary" is a tale of Imperial Rome and of the poetic illegitimate son of the emperor, whom the emperor loves more than he does his own arrogant, loutish heir.
This is Golding at his best
.Lord of the Flies (50th Anniversary Edition)The Double Tongue
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