In this chilling futuristic novel, four men and women attempt an escape to legendary Avalon after “the Movement” threatens the liberty and comforts they have taken for granted. Visa for Avalon takes place in an unnamed country and an unnamed time. In it, Bryher uses her knowledge of history and psychology to examine the eruption of a political crisis in a surprisingly familiar setting. First published in 1965, it resonates profoundly in the U.S. in 2004. The style is understated and tense as Bryher subtly suggests that closing our eyes to growing restrictions and loss of liberties does not protect us. And she offers a provocative commentary about the “paradise” of King Arthur’s legendary Avalon, as well. This is a wake-up book that will encourage readers of all ages and backgrounds to defend democracy and get out and vote.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Robinson has retired to the peaceful fishing village of Trelawney, where he lodges with Lilian, a widow much attached to her snug cottage. But there have been vague intimations of the growing strength of a tyrannical political force known as the Movement, and when the government abruptly requisitions her home, Lilian, along with many others, suddenly awakens to the fact that she has no place in this cruel new world. She and Robinson hastily seek permission to immigrate to the distant land of Avalon, but it may be too late. So begins this tautly constructed, chillingly dramatic, and profoundly resonant novel of warning. When it was first published in 1965, Britian-born and Switzerland-based Bryher (1894-1983) was a popular historical novelist, but her work has long been out of print, and her fascinating life--she was also a pioneering publisher and philanthropist who helped dozens of Jewish and German intellectuals escape Nazi persecution--has nearly been forgotten. This is an inspired and timely resurrection of an incisive and provocative fable of the high cost of apathy and the insidiousness of fascism, an intriguing progenitor to Philip Roth's The Plot against America [BKL Ag 04], and readers will find the accompanying profile of Bryher equally compelling. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“Visa for Avalon is a testament to the power of fiction. It illuminates the truth at the heart of what is commonly called reality. This account of lives, transformed and ruined by the triumph of a totalitarian rule is a timely reminder of how moral and intellectual laziness and apathy can pave the road to the reign of terror brought on by such a system.” AZAR NAFISI, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
“Visa for Avalon is a visionary and haunting novel. Bryher wrote this book forty years ago, but it speak directly to the politics of today. It’s a warning against apathy and should be read by anyone who’s worried about civil rights.” GRACE PALEY
“Visa for Avalon is a stark reminder of all that we stand to lose if we don’t protect our civil liberties. Thank you, Paris Press, for bring this long-neglected novel back into print. We need it today.” BARBARA EHRENREICH, author of NICKEL AND DIMED
“Bryher’s writing is frustratingly plain at times, in the way that the chimes of a large bell can be annoying because they ring so clear and so true.” LOS ANGELES TIMES
“A suggestive and beguiling fiction by one of the twentieth century’s most interest artistic figures. The Paris Press should be thanked for republishing it.” MARGARET ATWOOD, THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
“Paris Press is to be applauded for reissuing Visa for Avalon.” PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
“This is an inspired and timely resurrection of an incisive and provocative fable of the high cost of apathy and the insidiousness of fascism, an intriguing progenitor of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, and readers will find the accompanying profile of Bryher equally compelling.” BOOKLIST
“Bryher’s novel was timely in the cold war years when she write it, and it is timely now.” WOMEN’S REVIEW OF BOOKS
“Just as the title is rich in implication, so too is the novel’s every detail and seemingly casual observation.” THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
"This subtly chilling novel is not easily laid down. With brilliant economy and suspense, it depicts a fascist movement transforming the lives of ordinary people who merely wanted to be let alone. Prescient as Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Visa for Avalon could hardly be more timely here and now." ADRIENNE RICH
“. . . An enchantment—a journey and warning into the future . . . There is no one writing English fiction today who can say so much within a few magnificently chosen words.” HORACE GREGORY
“Visa for Avalon is a visionary and haunting novel. Bryher wrote this book forty years ago, but it speak directly to the politics of today. It’s a warning against apathy and should be read by anyone who’s worried about civil rights.” GRACE PALEY
“Visa for Avalon is a stark reminder of all that we stand to lose if we don’t protect our civil liberties. Thank you, Paris Press, for bring this long-neglected novel back into print. We need it today.” BARBARA EHRENREICH, author of NICKEL AND DIMED
“Bryher’s writing is frustratingly plain at times, in the way that the chimes of a large bell can be annoying because they ring so clear and so true.” LOS ANGELES TIMES
“A suggestive and beguiling fiction by one of the twentieth century’s most interest artistic figures. The Paris Press should be thanked for republishing it.” MARGARET ATWOOD, THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
“Paris Press is to be applauded for reissuing Visa for Avalon.” PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
“This is an inspired and timely resurrection of an incisive and provocative fable of the high cost of apathy and the insidiousness of fascism, an intriguing progenitor of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, and readers will find the accompanying profile of Bryher equally compelling.” BOOKLIST
“Bryher’s novel was timely in the cold war years when she write it, and it is timely now.” WOMEN’S REVIEW OF BOOKS
“Just as the title is rich in implication, so too is the novel’s every detail and seemingly casual observation.” THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
"This subtly chilling novel is not easily laid down. With brilliant economy and suspense, it depicts a fascist movement transforming the lives of ordinary people who merely wanted to be let alone. Prescient as Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Visa for Avalon could hardly be more timely here and now." ADRIENNE RICH
“. . . An enchantment—a journey and warning into the future . . . There is no one writing English fiction today who can say so much within a few magnificently chosen words.” HORACE GREGORY
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth reading,
This review is from: Visa For Avalon (Paperback)
I was interested in this book in part because I'd heard of Bryher in connection with the poet H.D., and in part because it was recommended by the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi, who, I figured, gets a lot out of her reading. She's definitely right about Visa for Avalon. It's half suspense/half political allegory, about several friends who belatedly realize that their (unnamed) country has been taken over by a totalitarian movement while they were involved in their own lives. They decide to leave for another country called Avalon, which they don't know much about, and set about to get visas and to get out before the borders shut down. It is beautifully written -- lyrical, observant, and concise. It reminds me a bit of Coetzee.
The novel apparently draws on Bryher's experience in helping Jews escape the Nazis -- she lived in Switzerland in the early part of the war and helped many people escape Germany. And the book clearly resonates in the politics of the world today.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Prophecy of Tomorrow,
By Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Visa For Avalon (Paperback)
I stumbled across VISA FOR AVALON almost by accident. Like many I have read very little by Bryher and know almost nothing about her, but I remember my grandmother delighting in her historical novels of British and Celtic bygone ages. This book on the other hand is a modern day thriller, seemingly very much influenced by the spy thrillers of Nicholas Blake, the poet C Day Lewis, particularly his famous anti-Fascist tale THE SMILER WITH THE KNIFE. Orson Welles planned to make TSWTF as a vehicle for Lucille Ball when he still had an office at RKO; it would have turned Lucille Ball into an anti-Fascist sculptress caught up in a very Graham Greene predicament.
As a bonus we get a fine introduction by the poet (SWIRL) and scholar (CINEMATIC MODERNISM: MODERNIST POETRY AND FILM) Susan McCabe, who teaches at USC and who plans to write a full biography of the novelist Bryher. Not only that, but we get an afterword also by McCabe which puts this novel into context in any number of senses, linking this book to Bryher's other fiction, and seeing the parallels between the age in which it was written (the 1960s) and the Hitler era in which Bryher used her money the right way. And today when so many of our civil liberties are being torn away from us one by one. VISA FOR AVALON grabs you from the very first word and won't let you go until the twisty end.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Slim, subtle, and sly -- and well worth the buy,
By edlk (New England, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Visa For Avalon (Paperback)
VISA FOR AVALON is a slim book - Audrey Hepburn slim, with all that implies. The plot is seemingly simple (and filmic). Basically, within the space of a week and for different reasons, seven people decide to try to leave their country (a close copy of England), the only home most of them have ever known, before it is too late to do so, and go to a place that's little more than a rumor. ("'Avalon? ... It's very unfashionable these days.'") The sweet, confused, comic, desperate, disparate world that Bryher conjures in her novella is a pre-dystopia. Her story depicts what things might have been like - might be like - at the edge, just before.... Before the books start getting burned, before soma is ingested, before history gets revisioned, before reading becomes a criminal act.... Just before escape is impossible, just before Mordred claims victory. Faintly futuristic with Arthurian teases and political squints, VISA FOR AVALON is also subliminally Delphic, recalling that oracle's confounding challenge: know thyself.
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