Book description
In 'The Strange Adventures of Mr Andrew Hawthorn' and the other
stories in this collection, peculiar worlds of temptation, adventure
or iniquity are perilously close at hand. Mr Hawthorn himself steps
outside to allow his porridge to cool and disappears for five years
and more, a Glasgow grocer is shipwrecked and ultimately worshipped as
a god, a young mathematician discovers an entirely new aspect of
reality and becomes terrified by what he finds there, and an ageing
sinner clings grimly, weakly to a hard-won life of decency: John
Buchan in each demonstrating his abilities as a gripping writer of
short stories.
In his introduction, Giles Foden explores Buchan's innate sense of
the fascination held by sudden jeopardy and vanished comfort, and the
themes of the will and fate in his work.
John Buchan was born in Perth. He was an Imperial statesman,
MP, Barrister, and soldier as well as a writer. His first success as
an author came with Prester John in 1910, followed by a series
of adventure thrillers, or 'shockers' as he called them, all
characterized by their authentically rendered backgrounds, romantic
characters, their atmosphere of expectancy and world-wide
conspiracies, and the author's own enthusiasm.
Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967. His family
moved to Malawi in 1972 where he was brought up. His first novel, the
acclaimed The Last King of Scotland (1998), is set during Idi
Amin's rule of Uganda in the 1970s and won the Whitbread First Novel Award.
