Giles Goat-Boy

John Barth

Jun 2014 · Sold by Anchor

About this eBook

From the author of National Book Award-nominated Lost in the Funhouse, comes an outrageously farcical adventure that challenges our notions of technology, power, and human nature.

"[Barth] ran riot over literary rules and conventions, even as he displayed, with meticulous discipline, mastery of and respect for them." —The New York Times

Giles Goat-Boy tells the story of a human boy raised as a goat who comes to believe that he is humanity's prophesied messiah. In an absurdist universe that takes the form of a unversity--divided into an authoritarian East Campus and a more open West Campus--young George Giles rises to assume the title of Grand Tutor, the spiritual leader of the world and heroic defender of his people against the threat of a tyrannical computer system. Hailed as a "fantasy of theology, sociology, and sex" (Time magazine), Giles Goat-Boy has long been one of John Barth's most popular and multi-layered narratives.

About the author

John Barth was born on May 27, 1930, in Cambridge, Maryland. As a student at Johns Hopkins University he was fascinated by Oriental tale-cycles and medieval collections, a body of literature that would later influence his own writing. He received his BA from Johns Hopkins in 1951 and his MA in 1952. He has held professorships at Pennsylvania State University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Boston University, and taught in the English and creative writing programs at Johns Hopkins.   Barth’s first novel, The Floating Opera (1956), was nominated for the National Book Award. The End of the Road (1958) was also critically praised. In 1960, The Sot-Weed Factor—a comic historical novel—established Barth’s reputation. Giles Goat-Boy (1966) was a huge critical and commercial success, after which he revised and republished his first three novels. Lost in the Funhouse, a book of interconnected stories, earned him a second nomination for the National Book Award. His other works are Chimera (1972), a collection of three novellas, which won the National Book Award; Letters (1979), an epistolary novel; Sabbatical: A Romance (1982); and The Friday Book (1984), a collection of essays.