The Green Child

by Herbert Read, Eliot Weinberger (Introduction)

Overview

A visionary masterpiece filled with green children, quicksand portals, imaginary countries, revolutionary dictators, and subterranean worlds

The Green Child is the only novel by Herbert Read — the famous English poet, anarchist, and literary critic. First published by New Directions in 1948, it remains a singular work of bewildering imagination and radiance. The author considered it a philosophical myth akin to Plato’s cave.

Olivero, the former dictator of a South American country, has returned to his native England after faking his own assassination. On a walk he sees, through a cottage window, a green-skinned young girl tied to a chair. He watches in horror as the kidnapper forces the girl to drink lamb’s blood from a cup. Olivero rescues the child, and she leads him into unknown realms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811221825
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	10/16/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Sir Herbert Edward Read, (1893–1968) was an English anarchist poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner.

Eliot Weinberger’s books of literary essays include Karmic Traces, An Elemental Thing, The Ghosts of Birds, and Angels & Saints. His political writings are collected in What I Heard About Iraq and What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles. The author of a study of Chinese poetry translation, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, he is a translator of the poetry of Bei Dao and the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry. He was formerly the general editor of the series Calligrams: Writings from and on China and the literary editor of the Murty Classical Library of India. Among his many translations of Latin American poetry and prose are The Poems of Octavio Paz, Paz’s In Light of India, Vicente Huidobro’s Altazor, Xavier Villaurrutia’s Nostalgia for Death, and Jorge Luis Borges’ Seven Nights and Selected Non-Fictions. He has been publishing with New Directions since 1975.

Editorial Reviews

"If you want to imagine what it would be like to exist beyond desire, beyond loneliness, and even beyond identity, The Green Child is the book to read."

The Washington Post

"The Green Child conveys a private sense of glory. The same type of glory that impelled Christian writers to picture the city of God."

Graham Greene

"The Green Child has narrative and stylistic lucidity as startling as some of its fantasy."

The New Yorker

"The Green Child is a mesmerizing novel that resists categorization and simplification."

Tin House Lincoln Michel

"The Green Child has narrative and stylistic lucidity as startling as some of its fantasy."

The New Yorker

"The Green Child is the kind of book to write if you are going to leave just the one novel behind: singular, odd, completely original."

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

"[B]eautifully imagined and beautifully written."

Robert Gorham Davis

"[A] very charming philosophical tale."

The Times [London]

"[R]emarkable for its cool yet vivid style."

Bob Barker