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The Plato Papers

The Plato Papers

by PeterAckroyd (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 1999

    $4.17

  • Used

    Paperback 2000

    $3.24
Synopsis

On ritual occasions, Plato, the orator, summons the citizens of London to impart the ancient history of their city, dwelling particularly on the unhappy era of Mouldwarp (AD 1500-2300). He lectures upon "The Origin of Species" by the nineteenth-century novelist Charles Dickens and on Sigmund Freud while providing a glossary of twentieth-century terms, and explaining such early myths of creation as "super-string theory'"and "relativity." But then he has a dream, or vision, or he goes on a real journey - opinions are divided - and enters a vast underground cavern, where citizens of Mouldwarp London still live. On his return, Plato shares his stories of this lost world, but his words spread consternation among his fellow citizens and they quickly put him on trial for corrupting the youth with his lies and fables.

"From the Trade Paperback edition."

$4.17

Save:$12.10 (74%)

Quantity

3 in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 139
 Edition: First Edition
 Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Published: 01 Apr 1999
ISBN 10: 1856197018
ISBN 13: 9781856197014

Media Reviews
Richly revealing. . . . Unlike anything else Peter Ackroyd has written. . . . A jeu d'esprit.
--The New York Times Book Review
A lively tale and an invigorating meditation on the changelessness, after no matter how many eons, of human nature.
--Time
A serious divertissement, a brilliant fabulation that is the product of a playful, engaged, and well-stocked mind.
--The Boston Globe
A little book that raises some big questions. . . . You can finish it in a couple of hours. But if you read it carefully, you'll be thinking about it for days.
--Philadelphia Inquirer
Peter Ackroyd is a visionary, as The Plato Papers makes clear. This is one of the oddest but most important and original novels to appear in many years. This masterpiece of contemporary writing will thrill and entertain readers for years to come, but it will do more than that: it will enlarge their vision, stimulating organs long forgotten and never known.
--Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and Robert Frost: A Life
What makes The Plato Papers notable is not its fantastic invention but its intelligence...Excellently written...with a truly Socratic curiosity, making The Plato Papers a philosophical good read.
--Malcolm Bradbury, Financial Times
An invigorating mixture of satire, history, philosophy, morality, and linguistic investigation...it's like T.S. Eliot on speed meets Martian poetry but with better jokes.
--Michele Robert, The Times
Articulate, comic, wise, delicate, melancholy, exquisite. It simultaneously deconstructs the story of the past and builds its own myth. Inshort, this is a carefully pulsed breath of a book, with an impact that sneaks into one's dreams.
--John Clute, The Independent

A fantastic invention--excellently written. --Malcolm Bradbury -->


Richly revealing. . . . Unlike anything else Peter Ackroyd has written. . . . A jeu d'esprit.
--The New York Times Book Review
A lively tale and an invigorating meditation on the changelessness, after no matter how many eons, of human nature.
--Time
A serious divertissement, a brilliant fabulation that is the product of a playful, engaged, and well-stocked mind.
--The Boston Globe
A little book that raises some big questions. . . . You can finish it in a couple of hours. But if you read it carefully, you'll be thinking about it for days.
--Philadelphia Inquirer
Peter Ackroyd is a visionary, as The Plato Papers makes clear. This is one of the oddest but most important and original novels to appear in many years. This masterpiece of contemporary writing will thrill and entertain readers for years to come, but it will do more than that: it will enlarge their vision, stimulating organs long forgotten and never known.
--Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and Robert Frost: A Life
What makes The Plato Papers notable is not its fantastic invention but its intelligence...Excellently written...with a truly Socratic curiosity, making The Plato Papers a philosophical good read.
--Malcolm Bradbury, Financial Times
An invigorating mixture of satire, history, philosophy, morality, and linguistic investigation...it's like T.S. Eliot on speed meets Martian poetry but with better jokes.
--Michele Robert, The Times
Articulate, comic, wise, delicate, melancholy, exquisite. It simultaneously deconstructs the story of the past and builds its own myth. In short, this is a carefully pulsed breath of a book, with an impact that sneaks into one's dreams.
--John Clute, The Independent

A fantastic invention--excellently written. --Malcolm Bradbury

Author Bio
PETER ACKROYD is the award-winning author of the recent national bestseller The Life of Thomas More. His biographies--including T. S. Eliot, Dickens, and Blake--are as prized as his novels, which include Chatterton, Hawksmoor, and, most recently, The Trial of Elizabeth Cree and Milton in America. He lives in London, where he is at work on his next book, London: The Biography, a history of the city.