Питер Принс0.0 The 27-year-old hero of Play Things recently graduated and landed a job at a top architectural firm, but, he says, “I got tired.” Now he’s dropped out, grown his hair long and taken a job as a playleader at an adventure playground. But he quickly discovers that the job isn’t quite what he’d expected. The kids are violent thugs, even criminals, and the playground is a haven for thieves, perverts, and drug dealers. As the ineffectual playleader finds himself mixed up rather comically in their bizarre and dangerous schemes, it starts to look as though the summer will prove not to be about finding himself, but about finding a way to survive. . . .
Compellingly readable, very funny, and unexpectedly moving, Peter Prince’s critically acclaimed first novel, Play Things (1972), won the prestigious Somerset Maugham Award. This edition, the first in nearly forty years, includes a new foreword by the author.
“An agreeably readable first novel ... light-hearted throughout, and altogether the book is a promising beginning to Mr Prince’s career as a novelist.” – J. G. Farrell, The Listener
“Mr Prince is absolutely first class. His short book grips as a story ... exciting, relevant, a whole-sale gift for the top-notch department.” – Oswell Blakeston, Books and Bookmen
“[A] newcomer who looks worth watching . . . Prince contrives to make [his] hero entirely sympathetic . . . he creates an air of hope and human potential, and you feel a surge of sheer affection for this not-so-null figure.” – The Guardian
Paul Strathern0.0 Marseilles, 1891: as Arthur Rimbaud lies dying in hospital, his mind wanders fitfully - taking him back to Commune-era Paris, and the scandalous life he led with Verlaine. But, above all, he is transported to Harar, Abyssinia, where he ventured in 1880 to seek his fortune, having chucking in the disreputable game of writing poetry...Paul Strathern's second novel, published in 1972, won a Somerset Maugham Award both for its superb evocation of the colour, squalor and hurlyburly of Harar and for its inspired 'impersonation' of Rimbaud - restless, ragged self-overcomer, would-be explorer-imperialist, and genius poet repulsed by his past literary life.
