Book description
'Utterly engrossing. I found myself drawn into Schiele's reeling
world with its reek
of wet paint and sex.' Jon McGregor, author
of
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
'Doesn't shrink
from depicting the squalor of Schiele's existence and powerfully
evokes his uncompromising talent' Guardian
The son of a railway
inspector, Schiele rejects his bourgeois upbringing and flees in
pursuit of artistic fulfilment. When he gains admission to the
prestigious Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, it seems that a glittering
career lies ahead of him. But Schiele's talent drives him to portray
the moral and physical squalor of the Habsburg capital, and he is
rejected by an indignant and hypocritical art world. Forced to endure
acute poverty and even imprisonment, Schiele continues to pursue his
artistic mission, and in the last months of his life finally finds
acclaim with those who had shunned him. In a lavish first novel of
rare descriptive power and empathy, fuelled by a blend of research and
literary imagination, Crofts succeeds in evoking the man as well as
the artist. The result is a masterful, at times heartbreaking
portrayal of Austria's most decadent and most misunderstood painter,
and of the city which both inspired and destroyed him.
Lewis Crofts was born in 1977 and grew up in Somerset. He has lived
and worked successively in Germany, France, the Czech Republic and
Belgium. His fascination with Egon Schiele was sparked while living in
Prague. He is currently at work on a second novel.
