Book description
Edward Venn-Thomas lives in the twentieth century but has been
mysteriously transported to the future, and the apparently idyllic
society of New Create, where there is no hunger, no war and no
dissatisfaction. However Venn-Thomas is starting to find life among the
New Cretans rather dull. He comes to realize that their perfect
existence, inspired by the poets and magicians of their strange occultic
religion, lacks one fundamental thing - evil. So Venn-Thomas sees it as
nothing less than his duty to introduce them to the darker side of life.
First published in 1949 and also known as
Watch the North Wind Rise
, Graves's novel is a thrilling blend of utopian fantasy, science
fiction and mythology. Robert Graves was a poet, professor, and the
author of Goodbye to All That
(1929), a landmark anti-heroic memoir of life in the trenches during
World War I. He is even better known for his historical novels about the
Roman emperor Claudius: I, Claudius
(1934) and Claudius the God
(1935). Despite those successes, Graves was primarily a poet: he
published dozens of volumes of his verse during his life, and was
professor of poetry at Oxford from 1961-66. Graves lived most of his
adult life on the island of Majorca, at first with fellow poet Laura
Riding, and later with his second wife Beryl Hodge.
