The Root and the Flower

by L.H. Myers, Penelope Fitzgerald (Introduction)

Overview

Set in the war-torn world of Mughal India and first published in the gathering darkness of the 1930s, the three novels collected in The Root and the Flower are stories of intrigue, murder, and romance; of Tantric abandonment and Buddhist renunciation; of emotional delirium and spiritual adventure. This enthralling visionary trilogy is, as Penelope Fitzgerald remarks in her introduction, a "strange masterpiece," and one of the unsung glories of modern literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780940322608
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	03/31/2001
Series:	NYRB Classics Series
Pages:	656
Sales rank:	1,094,226
Product dimensions:	4.96(w) x 7.94(h) x 1.65(d)

About the Author

L.H. (Leopold Hamilton) Myers is the author of The Orissers (1923), The Clio (1925), Strange Glory (1936), and The Pool of Vishnu (1940), which was intended to complete the story told in The Root and the Flower. The son of a founding member of the Society for Psychical Research, Myers was deeply concerned with issues of spiritual transcendence and social justice; briefly active with the Bloomsbury Group, he later rejected what he judged the members’ insufficient regard for spiritual matters. He committed suicide in 1944.

Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) graduated with honors from Somerville College, Oxford, and worked at a variety of jobs until, in 1975, she published her first book, a biography of the pre-Raphaelite master Edward Burne-Jones. She was the author of two other biographies and ten works of fiction, among them The Blue Flower, Human Voices, and The Bookshop.

What People are Saying About This

L. P. Hartley

…A unique work; there is nothing like it in the field of English fiction…The prevailing impression it leaves is one of beauty.

Spectator

…Once you read the trilogy, the world is never quite the same again.

The New York Times

His philosophy, if it can be called so, or his sense of religious awe, seeps into the emotional life of his characters unawares…it puts this book far above those of his contemporaries…For that matter we can scarcely think of a more valuable book, and fortunately enough, a more readable book.

Iris Mudoch

An exciting exotic adventure story…A remarkable work of imagination.