The Golden Age (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781564785787)

The Golden Age is a fantastical travelogue in which a modern-day Gulliver writes a book about a civilization he once encountered on a tiny island in the Atlantic. The islanders seem at first to do nothing but sit and observe the world, and indeed draw no distinction between reality and representation, so that a mirror image seems as substantial to them as a person (and vice versa); but the center of their culture is revealed to be "The Book," a handwritten, collective novel filled with feuding royal families, murderous sorcerers, and narrow escapes. Anyone is free to write in "The Book," adding their own stories, crossing out others, or even appending "footnotes" in the form of little paper pouches full of extra text-but of course there are pouches within pouches, so that the story is impossible to read "in order," and soon begins to overwhelm the narrator's orderly treatise.

Author: Michal Ajvaz
ISBN-10: 1564785785
ISBN-13: 9781564785787
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Language: English
Published: 04/20/2010
Pages: 329
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.89lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.50w x 1.25d
Award: Best Translated Book Award - Finalist