Babel, Alan Burns's fourth critically acclaimed novel, contains all the hallmarks of the aleatoric style he helped to define - shot through with seemingly random newspaper headlines, poems, snatches of conversation and anecdote, which both heighten and undermine meaning, and characterized by extreme contrasts of mood and style and startling surrealist juxtapositions of images and ideas. By turns comic and tragic, tender and brutal, religious and blasphemous, the narrative rockets from London to the United States to Vietnam to interstellar space, familiar events are constantly fragmented and reset into new patterns, and ultimately Babel becomes a cautionary tale about the tragedy arising from attempting to build Utopia.

By turns comic and tragic, tender and brutal, religious and blasphemous, the narrative rockets from London to the United States to Vietnam to interstellar space.

About the Author
A trained lawyer, Alan Burns (1929-2013) became a celebrated novelist and playwright, loosely associated with the 1960s British experimental circle of writers led by B.S. Johnson. He is best known for Europe after the Rain (1965), Celebrations (1967), Babel (1969) and Dreamerika! (1972).

Reviews
Cerebral audiovisual exercise. * Kirkus Reviews *
Alan Burns's novels deserve the attention of serious readers. -- David W. Madden
One of the two or three most interesting new novelists working in England. -- Angus Wilson



Book Information
ISBN 9780714549170
Author Alan Burns
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Alma Books Ltd
Publisher Alma Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 180g