Titus Groan

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In the vast halls of Gormenghast, the birth of an heir awakens old rivalries.

Gormenghast rises in stone and shadow: an immense, decaying castle where every life is shaped by ritual.

BOOK ONE OF THE GORMENGHAST TRILOGY

Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born. He stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone, hidden rooms and ancient observances that make up Gormenghast Castle.

Inside, all events are predetermined by complex ritual, lost in history and understood only by Sourdust, Lord of the Library. Yet beneath the castle’s umbrageous ceilings, order is already beginning to crack. There are tears and strange laughter, fierce births and deaths, dreams and violence, disenchantment and ambition.

Among the servants is Steerpike, a sharp, resentful kitchen boy whose intelligence will take him far beyond his station. While Titus is passed from rite to rite, Steerpike watches, listens and begins to climb.

Titus Groan is a classic Gothic fantasy about ritual, ambition and inheritance, set in a castle where the old order is beginning to give way from within.

'A gorgeous volcanic eruption... A work of extraordinary imagination' New Yorker

Mr Peake's first novel holds one with its glittering eye - It has a genuine plot in the strictest sense, and it persuades you to read on simply in order to know what will happen - its gallery of characters is wonderful
Nation

About Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Peake was born in 1911 in Kuling, Central Southern China, where his father was a medical missionary. His education began in China and then continued at Eltham College in South East London, followed by the Croydon School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. Subsequently he became an artist, married the painter Maeve Gilmore in 1937 and had three children. During the Second World War he established a reputation as a gifted book illustrator for Ride a Cock Horse (1940), The Hunting of the Snark (1941), and The Rime of The Ancient Mariner (1943). Titus Groan was published in 1946, followed in 1950 by Gormenghast. Among his other works are Shapes and Sounds (1941), Rhymes Without Reason (1944), Letters from a Lost Uncle (1948) and Mr Pye (1953). He also wrote a number of plays including The Wit to Woo (1957), which was met by critical failure. Titus Alone was published in 1959. Mervyn Peake died in 1968.

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