Book description
In his four-volume series Return to Neveryeon, Hugo and Nebula
award-winner Samuel R. Delany appropriated the conceits of
sword-and-sorcery fantasy to explore his characteristic themes of
language, power, gender, and the nature of civilization. Wesleyan
University Press has reissued the long-unavailable Neveryeonvolumes in
trade paperback.
The eleven stories, novellas, and novels in Return to Neveryeon's four
volumes chronicle a long-ago land on civilization's brink, perhaps in
Asia or Africa, or even on the Mediterranean. Taken slave in childhood,
Gorgik gains his freedom, leads a slave revolt, and becomes a minister
of state, finally abolishing slavery. Ironically, however, he is
sexually aroused by the iron slave collars of servitude. Does this
contaminate his mission -- or intensify it? Presumably elaborated from
an ancient text of unknown geographical origin, the stories are sunk in
translators' and commentators' introductions and appendices, forming a
richly comic frame. "Delany continues to surprise and delight . .
. [his] playfulness is the kind that involves you in the flow, forces
you to see details in a larger context, yet never lets you forget that
what you are reading is, after all, nothing but artifice, a series of
signs."--New York Times Book Review Samuel R. Delany's many
prizes include the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the William
Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime's contribution to gay and
lesbian literature. Wesleyan has published both his fiction and
nonfiction, including Atlantis: three tales (1995), Silent Interviews:
On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics (1994), Longer
Views: Extended Essays (1996), and Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts &
the Politics of the Paraliterary. The press has also reissued his
classic science fiction novels Dhalgren (1996), Trouble on Triton (1996,
originally published as Triton), and The Einstein Intersection (1998).
