The Image of a Drawn Sword

The calm of Reynard Langrish's quietly predictable life is shattered when, on a night of rain-swept storm, a stranger - a young soldier called Captain Archer - appears at his remote Kentish cottage. He takes Langrish to an ancient hill fort and introduces him to the men under his command, all of whom share a mysterious tattoo - two snakes entwined around a drawn sword - and are engaged in preparations to defend against a nameless menace, referred to only as 'the Emergency'.As the dreamlike narrative rapidly accelerates into Kafkaesque nightmare, Langrish is drawn into a world where illusion, paranoia, and reality unite with lethal consequences, and disorienting shifts of time and perception culminate in a terrifying moment of pure horror.Originally published in 1950, The Image of a Drawn Sword is steeped in the themes and images that occupy much of Brooke's writing - the relentlessness of time, suppressed homosexuality, condemned love, self-hatred, and futility; and, above all, an England that was both real and uniquely his own, a mystical, half-known natural world.'In its way not inferior to Kafka . . . [it has] a haunting, sinister quality' - Anthony Powell'Seldom have naturalism and fantasy been more strangely merged' - Elizabeth Bowen'He is subtle as the devil' - John Betjeman'The skill and intensity of the writing made peculiarly haunting this cry of complaint on behalf of a bewildered Man' - Pamela Hansford Johnson, Daily Telegraph

Product details

• Authors: Jocelyn Brooke, Brooke Jocelyn
• Publisher: Bello
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: from age 18
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.10.2017
• EAN: 9781509855858
• ISBN: 978-1-5098-5585-8
• No. of pages: 154
• Dimensions: 133 mm x 203 mm x 9 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Kent, FICTION / War & Military, FICTION / Literary, FICTION / Small Town & Rural, c 1950 to c 1959, Fiction: general and literary, War, combat and military adventure fiction, Relating to gay people, C 1945 To C 1960, FICTION / LGBTQ+ / Gay