SYBARITE
AMONG THE SHADOWS
Dylan
Thomas, Aleister Crowley
and Victor Neuburg
caught
in a surrealist web.
What if the Beast returned and
you were not sure if he were the best or worst thing that had ever happened
to you?
Sybarite
among the Shadows finds Victor Neuburg on
June 11 1936 with the poet he discovered, Dylan
Thomas. They embark on
a quest whose object is Neuburg's old master, the Great Beast 666; settings,
the Surrealist Exhibition, and pubs and clubs of bohemian London; characters,
Augustus John, Nina
Hamnett and Tom Driberg. Neuburg confronts his demons;
Crowley does too. They also meet something far more menacing: MI5's plot
to avert the Abdication.
Praise for SYBARITE
AMONG THE SHADOWS
'McNeff's
novel is so different from anything else you'd normally find on
a bookshelf that it should perhaps be a compulsory purchase.'
-
Independent On Sunday
To
use Aleister Crowley in a work of 'faction' is brave indeed.
Just
his name casts a spell over the page Richard
McNeff has faced up to the task with aplomb and realistically
recreates him in all his bizarre, mesmerizing complexity.'
-
Martin Booth,
author of Aleister
Crowley: A Life
'Full of fascinating
nuggets…..Neuburg's
crisis of identity with AC is very well observed.'
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