World of Wonders

Description

World of Wonders is the third novel in Robertson Davies’s celebrated Deptford Trilogy, which began with Fifth Business and The Manticore. Called “a spectacular, soaring work, an astounding tour de force unequaled in recent literature,” it is the story of Magnus Eisengrim, master illusionist, the most illustrious magician of his age.

“World of Wonders is a novel of stunning verbal energy and intelligence. . . . Robertson Davies’s tour de force.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Among contemporary novelists, only Graham Greene has trod this ground and gleaned it so successfully.” —New Republic

“Davies’s Deptford Trilogy is one of the splendid literary enterprises of this decade.” —Newsweek

“One of the great modern novelists.” —Malcolm Bradbury, The Sunday Times (UK)

“Robertson Davies is a novelist whose books are thick and rich with humor, character and incident. They are plotted with skill and much flamboyance.” —The Observer (UK)

“A mature and wise writer.” —Anthony Burgess, The Sunday Times (UK)

“Davies is a thoughtful, tasteful mediator in human affairs.” —Kirkus ReviewsRobertson Davies (1913–1995) was born and raised in Ontario, and was educated at a variety of schools, including Upper Canada College, Queen’s University, and Balliol College, Oxford. He had three successive careers: as an actor with the Old Vic Company in England; as publisher of the Peterborough Examiner; and as university professor and first Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, from which he retired in 1981 with the title of Master Emeritus.

He was one of Canada’s most distinguished men of letters, with several volumes of plays and collections of essays, speeches, and belles lettres to his credit. As a novelist, he gained worldwide fame for his three trilogies: The Salterton Trilogy, The Deptford Trilogy, and The Cornish Trilogy, and for later novels Murther & Walking Spirits and The Cunning Man.

His career was marked by many honours: He was the first Canadian to be made an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he was a Companion of the Order of Canada, and he received honorary degrees from twenty-six American, Canadian, and British universities.US

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