Search for your favourite author or book

Hadrian Seventh: Black Classics

ISBN 
9780241313022
Format 
Paperback
Recommended Price 
R275.00
Published 
April 2018
About the book: 

The titlular character of Hadrian the Seventh is inextricably intertwined with his creator, Frederick Rolfe, the self-titled Baron Corvo. Both were Catholic converts and unsuccessful candidates for priesthood, who led bitter, misunderstood lives, betrayed (they thought) by friends, bishops and prelates. Both were at times struggling writers and failed inventors, their brilliance (they believed) insufficiently recognized, who lived alternately extravagantly and in squalor. Rolfe put all his obsessions, all his hate and suffering, his dreams and fantasies into George Arthur Rose, the outcast who through a bizarre sequence of events is elected Pope. Hadrian VII, the first English pontiff in five centuries, is a mass of contradictions: infallible and petulant, ascetic and corrupt, humble and despotic, he empties the Vatican's coffers to feed the poor and reshapes nations in a bid for world peace. With this blend of satire and self-knowledge which runs through the pages of this, his finest novel, Rolfe both vindicates and condemns himself.

Others also viewed

The thrilling new instalment in the globally bestselling series. The Women's Murder Club is...
'He felt a sudden deep pity for the finger joint that lay there on the dresser, a few drops...
A man's wife dies. What next? The next day is next, and the next, and so on. He smothers his...
He needed to hear Africa speak for itself after a lifetime of hearing Africa spoken about by...