The Solid Mandala - Hardcover

White, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224012479 ISBN 13: 9780224012478

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 1976

Synopsis

This is the story of two people living one life. Arthur and Waldo Brown were born twins and destined never to to grow away from each other. They spent their childhood together. Their youth together. Middle-age together. Retirement together. They even shared the same girl. They shared everything - except their view of things. Waldo, with his intelligence, saw everything and understood little. Arthur was the fool who didn't bother to look. He understood.

About this title

From the Back Cover

WINNER OF THE NOVEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

In The Solid Mandala Patrick White draws a telling and touching portrait of twin brothers. Waldo is the competent man of reason; he sees himself as the superior intellect. Arthur, accepted as a half-wit, is the innocent, God's fool, loving and outgoing in a blundering way. As they compete with and care for each other through half a century, their lives are inextricably intertwined - the two sides of man's nature forming a totality.

'He is more like Dostoevsky than Thomas Mann: his novels are maelstroms of the soul whose power resides in the nightmare detail which assails their protagonists. They testify to the beauty and contortion of the spirit as few others this century have done' Sunday Telegraph

'His most finished and powerful work' Sunday Times

'Wonderfully fresh and human...full of exhilarating energy and wit' Saturday Review

About the Author

Patrick White was born in England in 1912. He was taken to Australia (where his father owned a sheep farm) when he was six months old, but educated in England, at Cheltenham College and King s College, Cambridge. He settled in London, where he wrote several unpublished novels, then served in the RAF during the Second World War. He returned after the war to Australia, where he became the most considerable figure in modern Australian literature before being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. His position as a man of letters was controversial, provoked by his unpredictable public statements and his belief that it is eccentric individuals who offer the only hope of salvation. Technically brilliant, he is one modern novelist to whom the oft-abused epithet visionary can safely be applied. He died in September 1990.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 1976
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0224012479
• ISBN 13: 9780224012478
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320