shopping cart
Save up to 30% on our Staff Picks
Call us:  800-878-7323 HELP
McAfee SECURE helps keep you safe from identity theft, credit card fraud, spyware, spam, viruses and online scams.
Original Essays | October 18, 2009

Victoria Hislop: IMG From Leprosy to Lorca — Strange Inspiration



My first novel, The Island, was inspired by a chance visit to a tiny island leper colony off the coast of Greece on our summer holiday. It was a... Continue »
  1. $10.49 Sale Trade Paper add to wish list

    The Return

    Victoria Hislop

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$7.95
List price: $14.95
Used Trade Paper
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
Qty Store Section
1 Burnside Literature- A to Z

Other titles in the New York Review Books Classics series:

  1. A Book of Mediterranean Food
  2. A House and Its Head
  3. A Journey Round My Skull
  4. A Month in the Country
  5. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962
  6. A Time of Gifts
  7. A Way of Life, Like Any Other
  8. Afloat (New York Review of Books Classics)
  9. African in Greenland (83 Edition)
  10. All about H. Hatterr
  11. American Humor (New York Review Books Classics): A Study of the National Character
  12. Anglo-saxon Attitudes
  13. Apartment in Athens
  14. Asleep in the Sun
  15. Between the Woods and the Water
  16. Beware of Pity
  17. Black Sun
  18. Blood on the Forge
  19. Boredom
  20. Born Under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists
  21. Butcher's Crossing
  22. Cassandra At the Wedding
  23. Chess Story
  24. Clark Gifford's Body
  25. Contempt
  26. Conundrum:
  27. Corrigan
  28. Count D'Orgel's Ball
  29. Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (05 Edition)
  30. Defeat: Napoleon's Russian Campaign
  31. Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell
  32. Dirty Snow
  33. Envy
  34. Eustace and Hilda
  35. Fancies and Goodnights
  36. Flaubert and Madame Bovary
  37. Fox in the Attic (00 Edition)
  38. Great Granny Webster
  39. Hard Rain Falling
  40. Hons and Rebels
  41. In Hazard
  42. In the Freud Archives
  43. Indian Summer
  44. Inverted World
  45. Jejuri
  46. Kaputt
  47. Late Mattia Pascal (04 Edition)
  48. Letters from Russia
  49. Life and Fate
  50. Love in a Fallen City
  51. Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese
  52. Manservant and Maidservant
  53. Mary Olivier : a Life (02 Edition)
  54. Mawrdew Czgowchwz
  55. Memed, My Hawk
  56. Memoirs
  57. Memoirs of Hecate County
  58. Memoirs of Montparnasse
  59. Memories of the Future
  60. Men and Gods: Myths and Legends of the Ancient Greeks
  61. Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968
  62. Middle of the Journey (02 Edition)
  63. Miserable Miracle: Mescaline
  64. Monsieur Monde Vanishes
  65. Monsieur Proust
  66. Moon and the Bonfires (02 Edition)
  67. Moravagine
  68. Morte D'Urban
  69. Mouchette
  70. Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg
  71. Mr. Fortune's Maggot
  72. My Century
  73. My Fantoms
  74. Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States
  75. New York Stories of Henry James (05 Edition)
  76. Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn: The Collected Stories of Harvey Swados
  77. Niki: The Story of a Dog
  78. No Tomorrow/Point de Lendemain
  79. Nonsense Novels
  80. Novels in Three Lines
  81. Pages from the Goncourt Journal
  82. Paris and Elsewhere: Selected Writings
  83. Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties
  84. Peking Story : Last Days of Old China (03 Edition)
  85. Poem Strip
  86. Poems of the Late T'Ang
  87. Randall Jarrell's Book of Stories
  88. Records of Shelley, Byron and Author (00 Edition)
  89. Red Lights
  90. Rene Leys
  91. Riders in the Chariot
  92. Rogue Male
  93. Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece
  94. School for Love
  95. Season of Migration to the North
  96. Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam
  97. Seven Men
  98. Shakespeare
  99. Shelley
  100. Sleepless Nights
  101. Sorrow Beyond Dreams : a Life Story ((Rev)02 Edition)
  102. Stoner
  103. Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage
  104. Summer Cooking
  105. Sunflower
  106. That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana
  107. The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
  108. The Anatomy of Melancholy
  109. The Big Clock
  110. The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved
  111. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
  112. The Book of My Life
  113. The Case of Comrade Tulayev
  114. The Child
  115. The Chrysalids
  116. The Colour Out of Space: Tales of Cosmic Horror by Lovecraft, Blackwood, Machen, Poe, and Other Masters of the Weird
  117. The Complete Fiction
  118. The Day of the Owl
  119. The Diary of a Rapist
  120. The Dud Avocado
  121. The Enchanted April
  122. The Family Mashber
  123. The Fierce and Beautiful World
  124. The Foundation Pit
  125. The Fountain Overflows
  126. The Furies
  127. The Gallery
  128. The Go-Between
  129. The Golovlyov Family: Shchedrin
  130. The Goshawk
  131. The Haunted Looking Glass
  132. The Inferno of Dante Alighieri: A New Translation
  133. The Invention of Morel
  134. The Ivory Tower
  135. The Jeffersonian Transformation: Passages from the "History"
  136. The Liberal Imagination
  137. The Lord Chandos Letter
  138. The Man Who Watched Trains Go by
  139. The Moro Affair and the Mystery of Majorana
  140. The New Life
  141. The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert
  142. The Old Man and Me
  143. The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming
  144. The Outcry
  145. The Peregrine
  146. The Pilgrim Hawk
  147. The Post-Office Girl
  148. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
  149. The Quest for Corvo
  150. The Queue
  151. The Rider on the White Horse
  152. The Siege of Krishnapur
  153. The Singapore Grip
  154. The Slaves of Solitude
  155. The Slynx
  156. The Snows of Yesteryear: Portraits for an Autobiography
  157. The Stalin Front
  158. The Stories of J. F. Powers
  159. The Strangers in the House
  160. The Stray Dog Cabaret: A Book of Russian Poems
  161. The Summer Book
  162. The Ten Thousand Things
  163. The Tenants of Moonbloom
  164. The Thirty Years War
  165. The Unknown Masterpiece
  166. The Unpossessed
  167. The Vet's Daughter
  168. The War of the Worlds
  169. The Waste Books
  170. The Way of the World
  171. The Wooden Shepherdess
  172. The World I Live in / Helen Keller
  173. The World of Odysseus
  174. The Year of the French
  175. There You Are: Writings on Irish and American Literature and History
  176. Three Bedrooms in Manhattan
  177. To Each His Own
  178. To the Finland Station
  179. Tropic Moon
  180. Troubles
  181. Twenty Days With Julian & Little Bunny By Papa
  182. Unknown Masterpieces
  183. Varieties of Exile
  184. Victorine
  185. Virgin Soil
  186. W. H. Auden's Book of Light Verse: An Anthology
  187. Walter Benjamin
  188. Warlock
  189. We Always Treat Women Too Well
  190. Whats for Dinner
  191. Wheat That Springeth Green
  192. Witch Grass

The Towers of Trebizond (New York Review of Books Classics)

by Rose Macaulay

The Towers of Trebizond (New York Review of Books Classics) Cover

ISBN13: 9781590170588
ISBN10: 159017058x
Condition: Standard
All Product Details

Only 1 left in stock at $7.95!

Review-a-Day   (What is Review-a-Day?)

"Again and again while bookstore browsing in the last few years, I've come across something the NYRB has published that I've never heard of, taken it home, and felt like I've discovered a little treasure. That was how I felt reading The Towers of Trebizond, a small miracle of a novel by Rose Macaulay. Jan Morris' introduction informs us that this 1956 novel, Macaulay's last, was a critical and commercial hit on both sides of the Atlantic. How did it ever fall into obscurity?" Charles Taylor, Salon.com (read the entire Salon.com review)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

"'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot." So begins Rose Macaulay?s greatest novel. Traveling overland from Istanbul to legendary Trebizond, the narrator and her companions have a series of hilarious encounters with potion-dealing sorcerers, recalcitrant policemen, and an ever-appearing busload of southern evangelists. But though the dominant note of this very unusual novel is humorous, the import is often tragic — as along the way the narrator confronts the specter of ancient empires, religious doubt, and individual heartbreak. This award-winning book is fine, funny, and unique travel adventure.

Review:

"Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond is an utter delight, the most brilliantly witty and captivatingly charming book I have read since I can't remember when....Fantasy, farce, high comedy, lively travel material, delicious japes at many aspects of the frenzied modern world, and a succession of illuminating thoughts about love, sex, life, organized churches and religion are all tossed together with enchanting results." The New York Times

Review:

"The Towers of Trebizond is not an encyclopedia in disguise. It is a novel and a good one." Maurice Dobier

Synopsis:

'Take my camel, dear, ' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. So begins The Towers of Trebizond, the greatest novel by Rose Macaulay, one of the eccentric geniuses of English literature. In this fine and funny adventure set in the backlands of modern Turkey, a group of highly unusual travel companions makes its way from Istanbul to legendary Trebizond, encountering potion-dealing sorcerers, recalcitrant policemen, and Billy Graham on tour with a busload of Southern evangelists. But though the dominant note of the novel is humorous, its pages are shadowed by heartbreak--as the narrator confronts the specters of ancient empires, religious turmoil, and painful memories of lost love.

About the Author

Rose Macaulay (1881-1958) was born in Rugby, England, into a family of eminent scholars and Anglican clerics. The second of seven children, a tomboy who hoped one day to join the Navy, she spent much of her childhood in Varezze, a small Italian seaside town, where she enjoyed considerable independence for an English child of her era. In 1894, her family returned to Britain, and after studying modern history at Somerville College, Oxford, she began a career as a writer and quickly succeeded in supporting herself as a novelist, journalist, and critic. During World War I, she worked as a nurse and as a civil servant in the War Office before assuming a position in the British Propaganda Department. There she met Gerald O'Donovan, a sometime Irish Catholic priest, novelist, and married man, with whom she had a romantic relationship which was to last until his death in 1942. Rose Macaulay was the author of thirty-five books — twenty-three of them novels — and is best remembered for Potterism, a satire of yellow journalism; a biography of Milton; her haunting post-World War II novel, The World My Wilderness; two travel books, They Went to Portugal and Fabled Shore; and her masterpiece, The Towers of Trebizond. A mentor to Elizabeth Bowen and a friend to such luminaries as Ivy Compton-Burnett, Rupert Brooke, E.M. Forster, and Rosamond Lehmann, Macaulay was a well-known figure in London's literary world and a fabled wit. She was named a Dame Commander of the British Empire shortly before her death in 1958.

Jan Morris was born in 1926, is Anglo-Welsh, and lives in Wales. She has written some forty books, including the Pax Britannica trilogy about the British Empire, studies of Wales, Spain, Venice, Oxford, Manhattan, Sydney, Hong Kong, and Trieste, six volumes of collected travel essays, two memoirs, two capricious biographies, and a couple of novels — but she defines her entire oeuvre as "disguised autobiography." She is an honorary D.Litt. of the University of Wales and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Product Details

ISBN:
9781590170588
Introduction by:
Morris, Jan
Publisher:
New York Review of Books
Introduction:
Morris, Jan
Author:
Macaulay, Rose
Subject:
General
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Young women
Subject:
British
Subject:
FICTION / Literary
Subject:
Humorous fiction
Subject:
Bildungsromans
Copyright:
Edition Number:
Reprint ed.
Series:
New York Review Books Classics
Publication Date:
January 2004
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
296
Dimensions:
796x503x67 61

Other books you might like

  1. $18.95 New Trade Paper add to wish list
  2. $5.50 Used Trade Paper add to wish list

    The Paperboy

    Pete Dexter
  3. $1.63 Used Hardcover add to wish list

    Fidelity

    Michael Redhill
  4. $5.00 Used Trade Paper add to wish list
  5. $5.75 Used Trade Paper add to wish list

    Uncivil Seasons

    Michael Malone
  6. $17.95 New Trade Paper add to wish list

Related Aisles

  • back to top

Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.