Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published in USA
Apr 2011
384 pages
Genre: Novels
Publication Information
The Tragedy of Arthur is an emotional and elaborately constructed tour de force from bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist Arthur Phillips.
Its doomed hero is Arthur Phillips, a young man struggling with a larger-than-life father, a con artist who works wonders of deception but is a most unreliable parent. Arthur is raised in an enchanted world of smoke and mirrors where the only unshifting truth is his father's and his beloved twin sister's deep and abiding love for the works of William Shakespeare - a love so pervasive that Arthur becomes a writer in a misguided bid for their approval and affection.
Years later, Arthur's father, imprisoned for decades and nearing the end of his life, shares with Arthur a treasure he's kept secret for half a century: a previously unknown play by Shakespeare, titled The Tragedy of Arthur. But Arthur and his sister also inherit their father's mission: to see the play published and acknowledged as the Bard's last great gift to humanity....
Unless it's their father's last great con.
By turns hilarious and haunting, this virtuosic novel - which includes Shakespeare's (?) lost King Arthur play in its five-act entirety - captures the very essence of romantic and familial love and betrayal. The Tragedy of Arthur explores the tension between storytelling and truth-telling, the thirst for originality in all our lives, and the act of literary mythmaking, both now and four centuries ago, as the two Arthurs - Arthur the novelist and Arthur the ancient king - play out their individual but strangely intertwined fates.
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"Starred Review and Editor's Pick. Highly recommended for all who enjoy inspired, original, entertaining writing." - Library Journal
"It's a tricky project, funny and brazen, smart and playful." - Publishers Weekly
"The always-original Phillips has outdone himself in this clever literary romp." - Booklist
"The text of Arthur demonstrates that there are few limits to Mr Phillips's imagination." - Robert McCrum, The Guardian (UK)
"A funny, sad, absurd, moving, and very, very smart book. I don't know if it's fiction or non-fiction or both or neither, and ultimately it's irrelevant." - James Frey, national bestselling author of A Million Little Pieces
"A tour de force - clever, rueful, full of insight, and, as always, stuffed with amazing prose. Arthur Phillips can legitimately stake a claim to being one of the best and most daring and original of novelists." - Dan Chaon, national bestselling author of Await Your Reply
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Arthur Phillips was born in Minneapolis and educated at Harvard. He has been a child actor, a jazz musician, a speechwriter, a dismally failed entrepreneur, and a five-time Jeopardy! champion.
His first novel, Prague, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and received the Los Angeles Times/Art Seidenbaum Award for best first novel. His second novel, The Egyptologist, was an international bestseller, and was on more than a dozen "Best of 2004" lists. Angelica, his third novel, made the Washington Post best fiction of 2007 and led that paper to call him "One of the best writers in America." The Song Is You was a New York Times Notable Book, on the Post's best of 2009 list, and inspired Kirkus to write, "Phillips still looks like the best American novelist to have emerged in the present...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Arthur Phillips's Website
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