Parsifal

Peter Vansittart

First edition, 1988, Jacket design by Keith Cunningham

The dust jacket has yellowed slightly but still remains in an excellent condition with only a few small clippings along the top, and no scratch marks or fading. The pages of the book are all as new, without any inscriptions or loose binding.

In this glittering, kaleidoscopic novel Peter Vansittart re-creates and projects in his own inimitable style the familiar story from Wagner's opera in historical perspective.

The narrative spans the twilight zones of history to the brutish twentieth century and the collapse of Nazidom. It is an amazing -- often magical, sometimes hallucinatory, but always convincing -- journey, in which we follow the exploits of the legendary Percival and the quest of the Holy Grail.

In Parsifal Vansittart once again displays his rare ability to evoke period and atmosphere with astonishing flashes of imagery and subtle handling of analogy and metaphor, which together give the book a prismatic beauty.

Peter Vansittart is a prolific writer of fiction, including twenty-nine novels, and non-fiction, including, among many others, his autobiographical work, Paths from a White Horse. In 1969 he won the Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship, and in 1981 he was one of six recipients of the first Writers' Bursaries awarded by the Arts Council.