Giles Goat-Boy

by John Barth

Overview

From the author of National Book Award-nominated Lost in the Funhouse, comes an outrageously farcical adventure that challenges our notions of technology, power, and human nature.

"[Barth] ran riot over literary rules and conventions, even as he displayed, with meticulous discipline, mastery of and respect for them." —The New York Times

Giles Goat-Boy tells the story of a human boy raised as a goat who comes to believe that he is humanity's prophesied messiah. In an absurdist universe that takes the form of a unversity—divided into an authoritarian East Campus and a more open West Campus—young George Giles rises to assume the title of Grand Tutor, the spiritual leader of the world and heroic defender of his people against the threat of a tyrannical computer system. Hailed as a "fantasy of theology, sociology, and sex" (Time magazine), Giles Goat-Boy has long been one of John Barth's most popular and multi-layered narratives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385240864
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/18/1987
Series:	Anchor Literary Library Series
Pages:	752
Sales rank:	320,688
Product dimensions:	5.49(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.74(d)

About the Author

John Barth (1930-2024) was an American writer celebrated for his postmodern and metafictional fiction. Barth’s first novel, The Floating Opera, was published in 1956, followed by The End of the Road. Barth achieved critical and commercial success in the 1960s with The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy. His collection of interconnected stories, Lost in the Funhouse, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1969. His other works include Chimera, a collection of three novellas that won the National Book Award in 1973; Letters, an epistolary novel; Sabbatical: A Romance; and The Friday Book, a collection of essays.

Editorial Reviews

Giles Goat-Boy is a bonkers Cold War allegory that draws from the Bible, Oedipus Rex, Don Quixote, and Ulysses, among other works.” —The New York Times

“[Barth’s novels are] distinguished by a wide range of erudition, invention, wit, historical references, whimsy, bawdiness, and a great richness of image and style.” —The Paris Review

“By merrily using fiction to dissect itself, [Barth] was at the vanguard of a movement that defined a postwar American style. . . . Barth’s influence is unmistakable in David Foster Wallace’s work, as it is in that of so many others, including Zadie Smith, Jonathan Lethem, Jennifer Egan, George Saunders and David Mitchell. . . . For all of Barth’s outrageous experiments, he always seemed to find his way back to the basic moral question that every great fiction writer has tried to wrangle: How should one be?” —The New York Times

“[A] playfully erudite author whose darkly comic and complicated novels revolved around the art of literature and launched countless debates over the art of fiction.” —The Guardian

From the Publisher