After These Things

(Paperback)

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Description

Continuing with her narration of the story of the Patriarchs in the Book of Genesis, After These Things is an account of the relationship between Abraham's tragic son Isaac and Isaac's son Jacob. The book follows the psychological trail of the children of Abraham, the first properly constituted family and finds that like all families, their story is structured by wishes and fears. In Isaac and Jacob's relationship we see all the complexities of love, power, desire that make them quintessentially human. The inimitable Jenny Diski tells this ancient story anew, with the deliciously subversive wit and intelligence readers have come to expect from this wonderfully surprising writer.

Reviews

Jenny Diski is among this country's funniest and most intelligent writers...Soap-opera gripping...this is a brilliantly accomplished book. Read it now, and then force it on people you like' Waterstone's Books Quarterly 'Seizes the story of Jacob and Esau by the throat and subjects it to an energetic process of what one is tempted to call energetic rehydration. She takes the desiccated fragments of those texts and drops them into her own fluid imagination, where they bloom, miraculously, like so many Japanese paper flowers...Goodness, it is interesting. And all it took was Diski's cool, elegant, rather cruel prose.' Sunday Telegraph ' In her recasting of this everyday story of Biblical folk she has given us a searching narrative of considerable modern passion.' Guardian 'Diski brings a skilled novelist's technique to the story telling' Scotland on Sunday '...A haunting reflection on how we perceive the defining moments of our lives...After These Things provides a new twist in the story of human self-understanding' TLS 'Diski's twin-tale is, in its own right, a sensitive and stylish retelling of the familiar.'.

Author Bio

Jenny Diski is the author of eight novels and two memoirs: SKATING TO ANTARCTICA and STRANGER ON A TRAIN. She lives in Cambridge.