The Polyglots

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Set in the Far East just after the First World War, Gerhardie's comic masterpiece in the tale of an eccentric Belgian family, recounted by their young English relative who comes to stay with them. Filled with bizarre characters depressives, obsessives, paranoiacs and sex maniacs Gerhardie paints a wonderfully strange world where the comic and tragic are entwined.

Reviews

Wonderfully eccentric, funny and beguilingly melancholic. Gerhardie's masterpiece -- William Boyd
A master of ironic comedy * Tablet *
Comic, full of farcical characters, while at the same time containing acts of tragedy and pathos, which are surprising as well as heart-rending... A wonderful world where comedy and tragedy intertwine' * Historical Novel Society *
This story of a citizen of the world is both funny and melancholy Dickensian in spirit yet also true to its moment in the wake of the First World War and the Russian Revolution * TLS *

Author Bio

William Gerhardie (1895-1977) was born in St Petersburg. Leaving Russia in the wake of the 1917 revolution, Gerhardie travelled to Siberia with the British Military Mission. After two years there, he left the army with an OBE, sailing to England by way of Singapore, Colombo and Port Said a journey that forms the closing chapters of The Polyglots. He died in London in 1977.