In the Shape of a Boar

Lawrence Norfolk has been hailed in his native England as "just about ahead of everyone in his generation of novelists" (The Observer) and acclaimed as "Britain's brightest young writer" by The Guardian. His award-winning novels Lempriere's Dictionary and The Pope's Rhinoceros were best-sellers there, and have gone on to win acclaim throughout the world. Now he has written his most ambitious novel yet -- a story that sweeps from prehistory to the present day in addressing the meeting point of truth and lies: In the Shape of a Boar. The story begins in the ancient Greece of myth, where King Meleager of Kalydon has assembled the sixty greatest hunters -- and one huntress, Atalanta -- to rid his realm of the supernatural boar sent by the vengeful goddess Artemis to lay waste to his lands. But as the hunters bear down upon their prey a darker tale unfolds, of treachery and destructive love. It is a tale that will reverberate in those same hills across the millennia in the final chaotic months of the Second World War, as a band of Greek partisans pursues an S.S. officer. Solomon Memel, a young Jewish Romanian refugee who was rescued by resistance fighters and subsequently joined them in their chase, will be inspired by the experience to write a poem, titled Die Keilerjagd, or The Boar Hunt, which mixes the elements of the mythical hunt with the historical pursuit of S.S. field commandant Heinrich Eberhardt. The partisans, from the charismatic leader Xanthos to the dangerous beauty Theyella, will themselves become part of modern mythos, as the poem becomes an international sensation. But the truth of what happened in the hills of Kalydon in 1945 is more complicated than it seems, and as the older Sol reunites with his childhood love, Ruth, in 1970s Paris to make a film version of the poem, the dark memories and horrors of those days emerge anew. Epic in scope and staggering in its mastery of language and character, In the Shape of a Boar is a tour de force.


Genre: Historical