Seven Days in New Crete (Portway Reprints) [Hardcover]

Robert Graves (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 29, 1971 | ISBN-10: 0855940336 | ISBN-13: 978-0855940331

Edward Venn-Thomas lives in the twentieth century but has been mysteriously transported to the future, and the apparently idyllic society of New Create, where there is no hunger, no war and no dissatisfaction. However Venn-Thomas is starting to find life among the New Cretans rather dull. He comes to realize that their perfect existence, inspired by the poets and magicians of their strange occultic religion, lacks one fundamental thing - evil. So Venn-Thomas sees it as nothing less than his duty to introduce them to the darker side of life. First published in 1949 and also known as Watch the North Wind Rise, Graves's novel is a thrilling blend of utopian fantasy, science fiction and mythology.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

No one else offers his precise combination of eroticism, nightmare and epigram Guardian --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Robert Graves was a poet, professor, and the author of Goodbye to All That (1929), a landmark anti-heroic memoir of life in the trenches during World War I. He is even better known for his historical novels about the Roman emperor Claudius: I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1935). Despite those successes, Graves was primarily a poet: he published dozens of volumes of his verse during his life, and was professor of poetry at Oxford from 1961-66. Graves lived most of his adult life on the island of Majorca, at first with fellow poet Laura Riding, and later with his second wife Beryl Hodge. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: C.Chivers (June 29, 1971)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0855940336
• ISBN-13: 978-0855940331
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ian Myles Slater on Robert Graves' Utopia, September 11, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Seven Days in New Crete (Paperback)

"Seven Days in New Crete" is the original title (I think) of a book also published as "Watch the North Wind Rise." It first appeared in 1949. The original US edition was by Farrar Straus and Giroux, and there were US paperback printings by Avon Books in the 1960s, under the alternate title. I have not actually seen any later editions. In any version, it is a sort-of-science-fiction sort-of-novel by the poet, historical novelist, and would-be interpreter of anthropology and mythology, Robert Graves. It presents a tour of a future utopian society in which Graves' views of the ideal sexual (and other social) arrangements are displayed. There are resemblances, perhaps not entirely coincidental, to some of the experiments of the 1960s.

The society is based largely on Graves' own reconstruction of prehistoric Greece and the Aegean, as suggested in the novel "Hercules My Shipmate" (also, I believe, published as "The Golden Fleece"), and set out more fully in "The White Goddess" and the introduction and notes in "The Greek Myths." The latter two books are formally non-fiction, but "The White Goddess" is, in my opinion, probably the best fantasy novel ever written which does not have a developed narrative or an obvious plot. (Not a view Graves would have appreciated.)

"Seven Days in New Crete" does have a narrative, however. It was much admired by Fritz Leiber, a science fiction and fantasy writer of distinction, and a fine critic, who explored alternative societies in some of his own writings. (Mainly dystopian; as L. Sprague de Camp warned science fiction writers, utopias are insipid by virtue of their perfection). "Seven Days" is sure to intrigue anyone who has enjoyed Graves' books about antiquity, but it would be a poor introduction to his work. Those interested in utopian fiction in general will probably also find it of considerable interest.