The Laughter of Carthage: Between the Wars, Vol. 2: Pyat Quartet (Pyat Quartet 2) [Import] [Paperback]

Michael Moorcock (Author)

Book Description

Series: Pyat Quartet 2 | Publication Date: February 6, 2006

Having escaped the perils of the Russian civil war, Pyat discovers that the hazards of Europe are as nothing to the perils that await him in America. Touring the country as a speaker for the Ku Klux Klan, he is almost immediately involved in scandals. Only the reappearance of his enduring love, his femme fatale, Mrs. Cornelius, offers him a chance of escape.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This is a rich, ambitious and erudite book...If one purpose of fiction is to lead us into different worlds, and, as Virginia Woolf says, to make of them "some kind of whole", then Michael Moorcock...succeeds brilliantly' Carolyn Slaughter, Guardian 'His is the grand, messy flux itself, in all its heroic vulgarity, its unquenchable optimism, its enthusiasm for the inexhaustible variousness of things. Posterity will certainly give him that due place in English literature' Angela Carter, Guardian '[There are] those of us who have buttonholed strangers on the Underground and raved about Moorcock's masterpieces Byzantium Endures and The Laughter of Carthage' Sunday Telegraph

About the Author

Michael Moorcock was born in London in 1939 and published his first novel in 1961.He has written more than eighty books, fiction and non-fiction, including The Condition of Muzak which won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and Mother London, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize.He is based in London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Vintage Books (February 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099485133
• ISBN-13: 978-0099485131
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,338,514 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in London in 1939, Michael Moorcock now lives in Texas. A prolific and award-winning writer with more than eighty works of fiction and non-fiction to his name, he is the creator of Elric, Jerry Cornelius and Colonel Pyat, amongst many other memorable characters.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A true literary classic, May 25, 2001

By 

"academon" (Bangor, Maine) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Laughter of Carthage (Paperback)

In The Laughter of Carthage Moorcock takes his riotiously unreliable narrator from Civil War Russia and post-war France to America, the Ku Klux Klan (which, of course, he joins), corrupt Washington politicians, stunt flyers, gangsters, engineers, Hollywood and a lot more in between. This is a wonderfully readable series, a War and Peace for our own times, without doubt, and part of a sequence which must form one of the great Anglophone novels. This novel has never been in paperback in the US and Jerusalem Commands, perhaps even better than this, has never appeared at all. We are still waiting for The Vengeance of Rome which, by all accounts, Mr Moorcock has finished but is still polishing! If it is as good as I hope, we will have a great masterpiece on our hands!

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars great writing, but too much whining from the protagonist's part, October 15, 2008

By 

Ventura Angelo (Brescia, Lombardia Italy) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Laughter of Carthage: Between the Wars, Vol. 2: Pyat Quartet (Pyat Quartet 2) (Paperback)

Second instalment of Pyat's quartet...and though the writing is great, one feels tired after the hundreth tirade of the whining, self pityoing, self-glamorizing Pyat. his comprehension of hs times is limited, and his mawkish sentimentalism, combined with his frankly unpalatable racism make a very unpleasant combination. I don't know of others, but I prefer a protagonist I can empathize with, not an individual whose endorsement of the abject, evil ku-klux-klan exacted my utter distaste. But I could have overcome this, I suppose, had I not been bored with Pyat's annoying droning on the fact he practically invented everything that's been invented, that modernity is evil, that it's all the fault of the jews and so on and so on and so on....