An Illusion of Sun by John Fraser

An Illusion of Sun by John Fraser

An Illusion of Sun is the first of John Fraser's 19 novels (18 published, one forthcoming). 'I wanted to do a novel that smelled of fascism (I hope not a fascist novel ) -' Fraser says '- the slaughterhouse, the canals, the fruit - every kind of South and Central European fascism, from Franco to Tiso and Dolfuss, its impregnation of other discourses, from democracy to socialism. It was intended to show how that virus had penetrated the bourgeoisie, its philosophy and its theorists, the ornamental style itself the modesty veil thrown over.'The novel is located in a Slavonic Venice, a city in a state of decline. Perrina attempts to salvage her decaying palazzo both from the depradations of time and the ambiguous bureaucrats who seem to have designs on her as well as on the mansion. Torgano establishes a difficult and masochistic relation with Perrina, her concerns - and the city itself. A liberation seems to lie in leaving her and the city, but will this resolve anything? Of Fraser's unique writing, the distinguished poet John Fuller has commented: 'In Fraser's fiction the reader rides as on a switchback or luge of impetuous attention, with effects flashing by at virtuoso speeds. The characters seem to be unwitting agents of chaos, however much wise reflection Fraser bestows upon them; they move with shrugging self-assurance through circumstances as richly detailed and as without reliable compass-points as a Chinese scroll.'

John Fraser is a novelist and poet. He has lived in Rome since 1980. Previously, he worked in England and Canada. For more information on John Fraser, please visit www.johnfraserfiction.com or email info@aesopbooks.com. The distinguished poet, novelist, Whitbread Award winner and Booker Prize nominee John Fuller has written of Fraser's fiction: One of the most extraordinary publishing events of the past few years has been the rapid, indeed insistent, appearance of the novels of John Fraser. There are few parallels in literary history to this almost simultaneous and largely belated appearance of a mature oeuvre, sprung like Athena from Zeus's forehead; and the novels in themselves are extraordinary. I can think of nothing much like them in fiction. Fraser maintains a masterfully ironic distance from the extreme conditions in which his characters find themselves. There are strikingly beautiful descriptions, veiled allusions to rooted traditions, unlikely events half-glimpsed, abrupted narratives, surreal but somehow apposite social customs. Fraser's work is conceived on a heroic scale in terms both of its ideas and its situational metaphors. If he were to be filmed, it would need the combined talents of a Bunuel, a Gilliam, a Cameron. Like Thomas Pynchon, whom in some ways he resembles, Fraser is a deep and serious fantasist, wildly inventive. The reader rides as on a switchback or luge of impetuous attention, with effects flashing by at virtuoso speeds. The characters seem to be unwitting agents of chaos, however much wise reflection the author bestows upon them. They move with shrugging self-assurance through circumstances as richly-detailed and as without reliable compass-points as a Chinese scroll. Of Fraser's Animal Tales, Fuller wrote: It convinces me that he is the most original novelist of our time. His work has become an internal dialogue of intuitions and counter-intuitions that just happens to take the form of conversations between his inscrutable characters. But really it is a rich texture of poetic perceptions, frequently reaching for the aphoristic, but rooted in sidelong debate and weird analogies. The full text of John Fuller's article on Fraser is at www.johnfuller-poet.com/johnfraser.htm.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780956909831
ISBN 10	0956909833
Title	An Illusion of Sun
Author	John Fraser
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	AESOP Publications
Year published	2011-11-01
Number of pages	220
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.