A Hard Heart & The Very Hours of a Reviled Man

Howard Barker Price: $9.95

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A Hard Heart is about knowledge, self-knowledge, and the gulf between

Its protagonist, a strategist and innovator, is a culture�s last defence against barbarity

During a long siege she provides the intellectual resources that delay a city�s fall - but she is herself besieged by a man of infinite patience, her equal in cunning

His persistence, and the relations with the Queen, her patron, and with her only son, provide the distractions which fatally impede her ambitions to become no less than a god

The Early Hours of a Reviled Man takes place over a single night - beginning with the routine stroll of an anti-semitic doctor and novelist, and ending with a nightmare examination of his life and the ambiguities of his persecutors

Its protagonist is defiant, pathetic savage, by turns, an excoriating figure tapping his way down city thoroughfares awash with horror and nostalgia

This is Loius-Ferdinand Celine at bay, re-animated by Sleen, whose simultaneous shamelessness and abjection make him the target of hatred and despairing love