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From one of England's most esteemed novelists, an utter astonishment that captures an era through one life celebrated internationally and another entirely forgotten.
Knopf
January 2006
400 pages
ISBN: 030726310X
Hardcover
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Historical | Fiction
In the vast expanse of late-Victorian Britain, two boys come
to life: George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and
Arthur, in shabby genteel Edinburgh, both of them feeling at
once near to and impossibly distant from the beating heart
of Empire. One falls prey to a series of pranks en route to
a legal vocation, while the other studies medicine before
discovering a different calling entirely, and it is years
before their destinies are entwined in a mesmerizing
alliance. We follow each through outrageous accusation and
unrivaled success, through faith and perseverance and dogged
self-recrimination, whether in the dock awaiting complete
disgrace or at the height of fame while desperately in love
with a woman not his wife, and gradually realize that George
is half-Indian and that Arthur becomes the creator of the
world's most famous detective. Ranging from London clubs to
teeming prisons, from a lost century to the modern age, this
novel is a panoramic revelation of things we thought we knew
or else had no clue of, as well as a gripping exploration of
what goals drive us toward whatever lies in waiting--
experience resounding with issues, no less relevant today,
of crime and spirituality; of identity and nationality; of
what we think, what we believe and what we can
prove.
Intriguing, relentless and, most of all,
moving, Arthur & George richly extends the reach
and achievement of a novelist described by the
Philadelphia Inquirer as dazzling mind in
mercurial flight.'
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