Visionary poet and archaeologist Hugh Fox excavates the fragile human psyche and its need for spiritual belonging in his novel Depths and Dragons. The reader is swept along on a cosmopolitan excursion that skirts cultural scapes and languages as it lurches toward an unknown existential destination. The story is told evocatively through a synthesis of the tragi-comic and the author's kaleidoscopic stream of consciousness style. Fox is a consummate master of inner monologues that teeter somewhere between the conscious and subconscious without ever fully yielding to either. The aptly named Miriam must undergo a journey of violent displacement between the worlds of Jew and Gentile, rabbi and priest, orthodoxy and heresy. Along the way she is made to pay the ultimate price of familial sacrifice, degenerative diaspora, and the loss of her spiritual moorings. The novel battles states of inner and outer terrorism, from physical death to an exalted denial of the flesh, but all the while retaining its precious wit. The twists and turns of this self-pilgrimage lead to a surprising outcome, and one that is well worth sharing.
- ISBN10 1908011203
- ISBN13 9781908011206
- Publish Date 15 December 2010 (first published 7 December 2010)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Skylight Press
- Format eBook
- Language English