Book description
In this panoramic novel of Friar Roger Bacon, John Cowper Powys
displays his genius at its most fecund. First published in 1956, this
novel, set in thirteenth-century Wessex, is an amalgam of all the
qualities that make John Cowper Powys unique. The love-story of
Lil-Umbra and Raymond de Laon, and the quest of the Mongolian giant,
Peleg, for Ghosta, the girl seen, loved, and lost on the battlefield,
are intermingled with the historical, theological and magical threads
which form the brocade of this novel. Dominating all is the mysterious
creation of Roger Bacon one of the boldest as well as most intricate
of Powys' world-changing inventions. Professor G. Wilson Knight called
this 'A book of wisdom and wonders'.
