{"product_id":"babel-tower-9780679736806","title":"Babel Tower","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe Booker Prize-winning author of Possession presents an extraordinary story set against the backdrop of the 1960s--a turbulent decade of clashing politics, passionate ideals, and shifting sexual roles. \u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAt the heart of \u003ci\u003eBabel Tower\u003c\/i\u003e are two law cases, twin strands of the Establishment's web, that shape the story: a painful divorce and custody suit and the prosecution of an \"obscene\" book. Frederica, the independent young heroine, is involved in both. She startled her intellectual circle of friends by marrying a young country squire, whose violent streak has now been turned against her. Fleeing to London with their young son, she gets a teaching job in an art school, where she is thrown into the thick of the new decade. Poets and painters are denying the value of the past, fostering dreams of rebellion, which focus around a strange, charismatic figure--the near-naked, unkempt and smelly Jude Mason, with his flowing gray hair, a hippie before his time. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWe feel the growing unease, the undertones of sex and cruelty. The tension erupts over his novel \u003ci\u003eBabbletower, s\u003c\/i\u003eet in a past revolutionary era, where a band of people retire to a castle to found an ideal community. In this book, as in the courtrooms, as in the art school's haphazard classes and on the committee set up to study \"the teaching of language,\" people function increasingly in groups. Many are obsessed with protecting the young, but the fashionable notion of children as innocent and free slowly comes to seem wishful, and perilous. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn Byatt's vision, the presiding genius of the day seems to be a blend of the Marquis de Sade and \u003ci\u003eThe Hobbit. \u003c\/i\u003ePeopled with weird and colorful characters, charted with brilliant, imaginative sympathy, \u003ci\u003eBabel Tower\u003c\/i\u003e is as comic as it is threatening and bizarre.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA. S. Byatt\u003c\/b\u003e was the author of numerous novels, including \u003ci\u003eThe Children's Book, The Biographer's Tale, \u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ePossession, \u003c\/i\u003e which was awarded the Booker Prize. She also wrote two novellas, published together as \u003ci\u003eAngels \u0026amp; Insects, \u003c\/i\u003e five collections of short stories, and several works of nonfiction. A distinguished critic and author, and the recipient of the 2016 Erasmus Prize for her \"inspiring contribution to 'life writing, '\" she died in 2023.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50460697002258,"sku":"9780679736806","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_24f02eff-5797-4ded-91eb-c5695e21b45d.jpg?v=1730045412","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/babel-tower-9780679736806","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}