The Island in the Mind - Hardcover

Hall, Rodney

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1862073643 ISBN 13: 9781862073647

Publisher: Granta Books, 2000

Synopsis

A trilogy set in 17th-century Europe, featuring court intrigue and religious upheavals. Rodney Hall charts the lives of three remarkable people: a politician in "Terra Incognita"; a young woman in "The Lonely Traveller by Night"; and a legendary pirate captain in "Lord Hermaphrodite".

About this title

Review

The Island in the Mind is a sprawling, exhilarating evocation of European rivalry and ambition in the 17th century, the great age of geographical and intellectual discovery. Hall's novel charts the allure of one of the last blank spaces on the globe, the great undiscovered southern continent. In the opening story, the mythical island becomes the subject of a revolutionary opera named "Terra Incognita", performed against a backdrop of court machinations and sexual intrigue. In the second narrative, a young Venetian woman takes in to her protection a human curio bound for the Turkish Sultan Mehmed's menagerie, a strange savage with a "face so black you couldn't make out the features". It is only in the final story that the island is fleetingly glimpsed by a band of privateers who are blown off course and stumble across the landmass "some 150 degrees east of Greenwich".

Hall's delightful stories combine to imagine the great uncharted regions of the globe with an impressively panoramic grandeur. At the heart of The Island in the Mind is the conviction that the search for the southern continent is both an inner, as well as a geographical, voyage of discovery. The reader, like a spectator at the opera, is drawn to imagine "this Terra Incognita, this unknown and empty land, as a mirror held up for us to see ourselves". Encompassing past, present and future perspectives on Australasia, The Island in the Mind offers a fascinating series of reflections. --Jerry Brotton

Review

"'Everything about Rodney Hall's work is major: the beauty of the writing, the dark and vibrant imagination, and the enormous pleasure it gives the reader.' Michael Herr 'He ranks with Garcia Marquez.' Frankfurter Allemeine Zeitung"

About this edition

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1862073643
• ISBN 13: 9781862073647
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 576