God's Fool

by Mark Slouka (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.50

  The acclaimed first novel from the author of The Visible World

  Chang and Eng are twins. The cries that herald their entrance into the world are clear and piercing, but the loudest screams belong to the midwives. The two boys look perfect in every way - except for the skin joining them at the chest. For Chang and Eng are not only twins; they are also the first ever Siamese twins.

  Their journey through adulthood takes them from Asia to Europe and from there to America; they are granted audiences with kings, and paraded in salons and drawing rooms; later - starving and penniless - they trawl the doss-houses of London and, after a chance meeting with Phineas T. Barnum, join his travelling band of bearded ladies, albino beauties and German midgets. Eventually, they settle amid the plantations of North Carolina, where their hard-earned tranquillity is soon threatened by the looming spectre of the Civil War, its shadow signalling their final battle with fate.

  `A first novel of great style, power and ambition' Time Out

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.50

  Born attached at the chest, Chang and Eng were considered a marvel, an omen, a prophecy, an act of God. To the West they were freaks, to the East they were either evidence of God's glory or proof of his wrath. In this powerful novel, Mark Slouka brilliantly captures their inner lives and powerfully recounts their amazing lives. As children they were presented to the Thai Royal Court as a curiosity, then as men they set sail for Europe. There they entertained Kings and counsellors in salons and drawing rooms, from Brussels to Pamplona. Inevitably the culture that lifted them cast them down. Penniless, they moved from flop house to flop house until they were discovered by the inimitable Phineas T. Barnum. Shipped off to the United States with dwarves and two headed calves, midgets and twelve fingered flute players, they toured the country before settling as slave owners in North Carolina. In a sort of pastoral idyll, Chang and Eng married a pair of sisters and fathered twenty children, before the spectre of the Civil War threatened their peace and their way of life. God's Fool is an astonishing, powerful and beautiful novel that vibrantly captures both a changing world and a unique relationship. Sweeping and intimate, arnbitious and unusual, Mark Slouka's debut novel is a dazzling achievement.