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  • Published: 3 December 2022
  • ISBN: 9780099480419
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $35.00

A Maggot




An extraordinary work of fiction, from one of the world's most exceptional writers, in our new Fowles livery.

An extraordinary work of fiction, from one of the world's most exceptional writers.

The year is 1736 and five travellers are journeying across Exmoor on horseback, their purpose unknown. One evening they stop at a village inn for some rest and, soon after, hear that a man has been hanged nearby and that another is missing. What follows is a maze of beguiling paths and wrong turnings, rituals and revelations, unaccountable motives and cryptic deeds, as the mystery swerves towards a startling vision at its centre.

'This altogether admirable novel serves, as all literature should, the forces of subversion' Anthony Burgess, Observer

'The reader is carried headlong into a maze of violent death, bizarre sex, disguise and terror' Sunday Times

  • Published: 3 December 2022
  • ISBN: 9780099480419
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $35.00

About the author

John Fowles

John Fowles was born in 1926. He won international recognition with The Collector, his first published title, in 1963. He was immediately acclaimed as an outstandingly innovative writer of exceptional imaginative power, and this reputation was confirmed with the appearance of his subsequent works: The Aristos, The Magus, The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Ebony Tower, Daniel Martin, Mantissa, and A Maggot. John Fowles died in Lyme Regis in 2005. Two volumes of his Journals have recently been published; the first in 2003, the second in 2006.

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Praise for A Maggot

A remarkable and brilliant work of fiction...the imaginative power of the novel is astounding, the technical virtuosity and structural daring equally so

The Times

This altogether admirable novel serves, as all literature should, the forces of subversion. It is a worthy companion to The French Lieutenant's Woman, which does the same thing, but bolder in its experimentation and hence more notable as an artistic achievement

Anthony Burgess, Observer

Compelling and passionate fiction... Fowles's darting imagination skims across the landscape of two and a half centuries

Times Literary Supplement

Brilliant and compelling...he deploys his usual seductive narrative gifts to great effect

Guardian

A remarkable and brilliant work of fiction...the imaginative power of the novel is astounding, the technical virtuosity and structural daring equally so

The Times

This altogether admirable novel serves, as all literature should, the forces of subversion. It is a worthy companion to The French Lieutenant's Woman, which does the same thing, but bolder in its experimentation and hence more notable as an artistic achievement

Anthony Burgess, Observer

Compelling and passionate fiction... Fowles's darting imagination skims across the landscape of two and a half centuries

Times Literary Supplement

Brilliant and compelling...he deploys his usual seductive narrative gifts to great effect

Guardian