Part of Series
Praise for the Aegypt sequence: "A dizzying experience, achieved with unerring security of technique."-The New York Times Book Review "A master of language, plot, and characterization."-Harold Bloom "The further in you go, the bigger it gets."-James Hynes "The writing here is intricate and thoughtful, allusive and ironic... Aegypt bears many resemblances, incidental and substantive, to Thomas Pynchon's wonderful 1966 novel The Crying of Lot 49."-USA Today "An original moralist of the same giddy heights occupied by Thomas Mann and Robertson Davies."-San Francisco Chronicle This is the fourth novel-and much-anticipated conclusion-of John Crowley's astonishing and lauded Aegypt sequence: a dense, lyrical meditation on history, alchemy, and memory. Spanning three centuries, and weaving together the stories of Renaissance magician John Dee, philosopher Giordano Bruno, and present-day itinerant historian and writer Pierce Moffitt, the Aegypt sequence is as richly significant as Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet or Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time. Crowley, a master prose stylist, explores transformations physical, magical, alchemical, and personal in this epic, distinctly American novel where the past, present, and future reflect each other. John Crowley was born in the appropriately liminal town of Presque Isle, Maine. His most recent novel is Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land. He teaches creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He finds it more gratifying that almost all of his work is still in print.
Author
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information. John Crowley was born in Presque Isle, Maine, in 1942; his father was then an officer in the US Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his 15th volume of fiction (Endless Things) in 2007. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His first published novels were science fiction: The Deep (1975) and Beasts (1976). Engine Summer (1979) was nominated for the 1980 American Book Award; it appears in David Pringle’s 100 Best Science Fiction Novels. In 1981 came Little, Big, which Ursula Le Guin described as a book that “all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy.” In 1980 Crowley embarked on an ambitious four-volume novel, Ægypt, comprising The Solitudes (originally published as Ægypt), Love & Sleep, Dæmonomania, and Endless Things, published in May 2007. This series and Little, Big were cited when Crowley received the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. He is also the recipient of an Ingram Merrill Foundation grant. His recent novels are The Translator, recipient of the Premio Flaianno (Italy), and Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, which contains an entire imaginary novel by the poet. A novella, The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines, appeared in 2002. A museum-quality 25th anniversary edition of Little, Big, featuring the art of Peter Milton and a critical introduction by Harold Bloom, is in preparation. Note: The John Crowley who wrote Sans épines, la rose: Tony Blair, un modèle pour l'Europe? is a different author with the same name. (website)
