The Benefactor

(Paperback)

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'A highly original, brilliant tale of a self-centred, solitary dilettante whose dreams take over his life' New York Post Hippolyte is a wealthy bohemian with a surprising, violently imaginative dream life. Taking the form of a memoir, The Benefactor is the story of his psychic grand tour through increasingly strange mental landscapes. As Hippolyte tries to make his daily existence conform to his bizarre dreamworld, and reality and fantasy become more and more indistinguishable, will he be able to find peace Funny, acrobatic, disturbing and profound, Susan Sontag's first book, published in 1963, is a wry pastiche of the nineteenth-century novel and a bold commentary on identity and the imagination. 'Originality, economy of language, brilliance . . . There is a Kafka-esque quality to The Benefactor' Newsday 'A major writer . . . she can make a real story out of dreams and thoughts' Hannah Arendt

Reviews

'An extraordinary, imaginative achievement that plays over the reader's senses with boldness, grace and daring.' - John Hawkes 'A highly original, brilliant tale of a self-centered, solitary dilettante whose dreams take over his life.' New York Post

Author Bio

Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. Her non-fiction works include Against Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, AIDS and its Metaphors and Regarding the Pain of Others. She is also the author of four novels, a collection of stories and several plays. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work, and in 2003 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. She died in December 2004. Penguin will publish Sontag on Film in October 2016.