Judith

by Nicholas Mosley

Overview

Judith is an aspiring young actress and the mistress of a writer on a popular satirical magazine. We learn of her involvement with drugs and increasing self-delusion. After a crack-up, she seeks healing in an Indian ashram run by an eccentric and possibly mad guru. But what is at the back of appearances; how calculated is the self-destructiveness from which a new order might emerge?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780916583774
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	02/01/1992
Series:	British Literature
Pages:	298
Product dimensions:	5.52(w) x 8.45(h) x 0.86(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Born in London, Mosley was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford and served in Italy during the Second World War, winning the Military Cross for bravery. He succeeded as 3rd Baron Ravensdale in 1966 and, on the death of his father on 3 December 1980, he also succeeded to the Baronetcy. His father, Sir Oswald Mosley, founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932 and was a supporter of Benito Mussolini. Sir Oswald was arrested in 1940 for his antiwar campaigning, and spent the majority of World War II in prison. As an adult, Nicholas was a harsh critic of his father in "Beyond the Pale: Sir Oswald Mosley and Family 1933-1980" (1983), calling into question his father's motives and understanding of politics. Nicholas' work contributed to the 1998 Channel 4 television programme titled 'Mosley' based on his father's life. At the end of the mini-series, Nicholas is portrayed meeting his father in prison to ask him about his national allegiance. Mosley began to stammer as a young boy, and attended weekly sessions with speech therapist Lionel Logue in order to help him overcome the speech disorder. Mosley says his father claimed never really to have noticed his stammer, but feels Sir Oswald may have been less aggressive when speaking to him than he was towards other people as a result.

Editorial Reviews

In [Mosley's] series of interconnected tales... he continues to push hard against the novelistic envelope, working to change the whole form and 'frame' of the language in which he writes. Engaging his reader from instant to instant with the questioning intensity of the dedicated progressive formalist, Mosley... consistently makes the mental and emotional experience of his books something special.

San Francisco Chronicle - Tom Clark

Mosley is one of the few to swim against this current [of trends in contemporary writing] successfully by combining the best features of modernism with the accessibility of earlier conventions.... [Judith has] the funniest nervous breakdown since Bruce Jay Friedman's Stern.... [Mosley uses a] deft and witty combination of new and old ways to tell a riveting story.

Joseph Coates

The narrative, in the form of several very long letters from Judith to men in her life, conveys in sensible, straightforward, matter-of-fact prose the profound disorientation and exaltation that follow from taking nothing for granted.

New Yorker

A British actress flees to India following a sadistic relationship and a friend's death. per MC: part of a quintet of novels, that last of which won the Whitbread Award and has been very well reviewed here (Hopeful Monsters).../again, great information but too long for what george has asked us to limit ourselves to in reprints/pk (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly