Titus Awakes

A final volume of the classic Gormenghast novels, produced from recently discovered manuscripts written by Peake's wife and based on his outlines, follows Titus's nightmarish departure from Castle Gormenghast.

A final volume of the classic Gormenghast novels, produced from recently discovered manuscripts written by Peake's wife and based on his outlines, follows Titus' nightmarish departure from Castle Gormenghast.

A final volume of the classic Gormenghast novels, produced from recently discovered manuscripts written by his wife and based on Peake's outlines, follows Titus's nightmarish departure from Castle Gormenghast. 20,000 first printing.

Mervyn Peake¹s Gormenghast trilogy is widely acknowledged to be, as Robertson Davies pronounced, ³a classic of our age.² In these extraordinary novels, Peake created a world where all is like a dream-- lush, fantastical, and vivid. Yet it was incomplete. Parkinson¹s disease took Peake¹s life in 1968, depriving his fans of the fourth and final volume of the series, Titus Awakes except for a few tantalizing pages, after which his writing became indecipherable. Or so it seemed.

In January of 2010, Peake¹s granddaughter found four composition books in her attic. They contained the fabled Titus Awakes in its entirety. Peake had outlined the novel for his wife, Maeve Gilmore, who had at last finished Peake¹s masterpiece.

It starts with Titus leaving Castle Gormenghast. Peake wrote: ³With every pace he drew away from Gormenghast mountain, and from everything that belonged to his home. That night, as Titus lay asleep in the tall barn, a nightmare held him. ³

Fans of Peake will delight in this new, wonderful novel, published one hundred years after his birth, every bit as thrilling and masterfully written as his famed trilogy.