Chaos And Night

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

Don Celestino is old and bitter and afraid. In exile from his native Spain for more than twenty years, he lives with his daughter in Paris, but in his mind he is still fighting the Spanish Civil War. Don Celestino's daughter has had enough. She decides to return to Spain, and reluctantly, helplessly, he tags along. Now he foresees a last heroic confrontation with his enemies; he wonders whether he will be worthy. Instead he encounters a new commercialized Spain that has no time for the past, much less for him. Or so it seems. One of the great characters of twentieth-century fiction, a lost soul who is, in spite of everything, the essence of whatever honor may be, Don Celestino is an unparalleled modern reincarnation of the spirit of Don Quixote and a triumph of Henry de Montherlant's caustic and compassionate art.

Reviews

A magnificent novel of a type that only Montherlant could produceThe authors feat in embodying much of himself in such an exceptional creation wile maintaining his customary austerity of view an of style, his almost frightening insolence and is extraordinary gift for characterization evokeadmiration. New York Times Book Review

Indisputably a magnificent writer. Saturday Review

Written with intense control and beautifully translated, Chaos and Night is one of those rare explorations of the place where political commitment, religious faith, illusion and necessity intersect, where morality and mortality come to terms. The New York Times

Wry and likeable Time

Admired by such as Malraux, Camus, Graham Greene and Peter Quennell[and] one of the few French dramatists worthy of ranking with Corneille and RacineThis is a magnificent novel of a type that only he could produceHenry de Montherlant will live as one of the outstanding writers of the century. The New York Times

Well rendered in English by Terence Kilmartin. The New York Review of Books

Author Bio

Henry de Montherlant (1896-1972) was one of the leading French writers of the twentieth century, and an Officer of the French Legion of Honor. His works include The Young Girls and The Bachelors, which was awarded the Grand Prix de Litterature de l'Academie Francaise and the English Northcliffe Prize. Gary Indiana is an American writer, journalist, and actor. He is the author of numerous books, including Do Everything in the Dark, Let It Bleed, and The Schwarzenegger Syndrome. He served as the art critic for The Village Voice from 1985 to 1988, and lives in New York City and Los Angeles, California. Terence Kilmartin (1922-1991) was the literary editor of The Observer from 1952 until 1987.