The Tragedy of Arthur

The Tragedy of Arthuris an emotional and elaborately constructed tour de force from bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist Arthur Phillips, "one of the best writers in America" (The Washington Post). Its doomed hero is Arthur Phillips, a young man struggling with a larger-than-life father, a con artist who works wonders of deception but is a most unreliable parent. Arthur is raised in an enchanted world of smoke and mirrors where the only unshifting truth is his father's and his beloved twin sister's deep and abiding love for the works of William Shakespeare--a love so pervasive that Arthur becomes a writer in a misguided bid for their approval and affection. Years later, Arthur's father, imprisoned for decades and nearing the end of his life, shares with Arthur a treasure he's kept secret for half a century: a previously unknown play by Shakespeare, titled The Tragedy of Arthur. But Arthur and his sister also inherit their father's mission: to see the play published and acknowledged as the Bard's last great gift to humanity. . . . Unless it's their father's last great con. By turns hilarious and haunting, this virtuosic novel--which includes Shakespeare's (?) lost King Arthur play in its five-act entirety--captures the very essence of romantic and familial love and betrayal. The Tragedy of Arthurexplores the tension between storytelling and truth-telling, the thirst for originality in all our lives, and the act of literary mythmaking, both now and four centuries ago, as the two Arthurs--Arthur the novelist and Arthur the ancient king--play out their individual but strangely intertwined fates. A New York TimesNotable Book * A New YorkerReviewers' Favorite of the Year * A Wall Street JournalBest Novel of the Year * A San Francisco ChronicleBest Book of the Year * A Chicago TribuneFavorite Book of the Year *A Library JournalTop Ten Book of the Year * A Kirkus ReviewsBest Book of the Year * One of Salon's five best novels of the year