Book - BookDetective

Name: The Bridge of Lost Desire

Author: Samuel R. Delany
Rank:

Rating:

Original Rating:

Pop Rating:

Genres/categories:
Fantasy, Fiction, Science fiction

Purchase/reserch links:

LibraryThing

Goodreads

Amazon

ISBNs:
9780819562784
0819562785

In his four-volume series Return to Neverÿon, Hugo and Nebula award-winner Samuel R. Delany appropriated the conceits of sword-and-sorcery fantasy to explore his characteristic themes of language, power, gender, and the nature of civilization. Wesleyan University Press has reissued the long-unavailable Neverÿon volumes in trade paperback.

The eleven stories, novellas, and novels in Return to Neverÿon's four volumes chronicle a long-ago land on civilization's brink, perhaps in Asia or Africa, or even on the Mediterranean. Taken slave in childhood, Gorgik gains his freedom, leads a slave revolt, and becomes a minister of state, finally abolishing slavery. Ironically, however, he is sexually aroused by the iron slave collars of servitude. Does this contaminate his mission - or intensify it? Presumably elaborated from an ancient text of unknown geographical origin, the stories are sunk in translators' and commentators' introductions and appendices, forming a richly comic frame.