The Insomniac Library is proud to reissue Gwendolyn MacEwen’s first novel, more than forty years after its original appearance in 1963.
MacEwen described what she set out to achieve as a "sort of powerful poetic mad half-abandoned prose somewhere between [Kenneth] Patchen and Virginia Woolf." Set in a medieval past that has distinctly modern overtones, the novel is about Julian, a young man who believes he is Christ. Wandering the countryside in a horse-drawn wagon, Julian learns "to suspend logic like a whale on a thread." He becomes a master of alchemy, performing "miracles" like curing the mad and changing water into wine. When his rapt audiences begin to lose faith, Julian must pay with his life. MacEwen skillfully implies a relationship between alchemy, miracles and belief, and the art forms she is engaged in herself, poetry and prose. What is the price the writer-magician must pay to engender belief in her audience? Is something true merely because we believe in it? With an afterword by the author’s sister.
About the Author
Gwendolyn MacEwen was born in Toronto in 1941. The author of numerous books of award-winning poetry, including A Breakfast for Barbarians, The Shadow-Maker and The T.E. Lawrence Poems, she also published novels, plays, travel memoirs and children’s books. MacEwen died in 1987.
