Kraven Images - Softcover

Isler, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099701715 ISBN 13: 9780099701712

Publisher: Vintage, 1997

Synopsis

It is 1974 and Nicolas Kraven, lecturer in English Literature at Mosholu College in the Bronx, is adrift upon a sea of troubles: his affair with his neighbour's wife threatens to progress from Thursday night to permanence; his students are a mixture of campus revolutionaries, predatory sexual exhibitionists and an old man intent on proving Merlin was a Jew; an elderly academic specialist in Love, possessor of a devastatingly effective aphrodisiac and a libido that belies her years, has alarming designs on his person; the Kraven demons, a familial curse, are in hot pursuit; and a spectre from his past, the one man who can smash this already chaotic life into ruins, is expected imminently.

Kraven flies to London, where he finds brief consolation in the arms of Candy Peaches, a stripper from Sausalito, and then to Harrogate, the town to which he was evacuated as a child, there to confront the ghost of his father, and to slay Kraven's demons.

About this title

Review:

"Isler's novels are a delight. His prose is dense, referential, barbed and well-educated; relishing word-play and puns" (John Melmoth Sunday Times)

"An accomplished academic comedy, a waspishly clever blend of irony, pathos and romance, academic farce and catastrophe" (Scotland on Sunday)

"His great strength is a relentless inventiveness which, with effortless ease and enormous fun, spins and then dissolves outrageously Shakespearean confusions and coincidences" (Martyn Harris Daily Telegraph)

"Isler's second novel is every bit as enjoyable [as The Prince of West End Avenue], and equally cranky" (Kate Kellaway Observer)

Book Description:

'An accomplished comic performance... A very entertaining novel' - Independent

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0099701715
• ISBN 13: 9780099701712
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256