The Absolute Book
(Hardback)
By Knox, Elizabeth
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- RRP: $59.50
- $46.97
- Save $12.53
- Pub Date
9 Feb 21
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The epic fantasy that's taking the world by storm--a bewitching story about a revenge killing, a mysterious scroll box that has survived centuries of fires, and the book that changed everything Majestic, brain-bending . . . Each time I thought the book was done surprising me, Kno...x . . . opened another gate and flung me through it. --Dan Kois, Slate Taryn Cornick believes that the past--her sister's violent death, and her own ill-conceived revenge--is behind her, and she can get on with her life. She has written a successful book about the things that threaten libraries: insects, damp, light, fire, carelessness and uncaring . . . but not all of the attention it brings her is good. A policeman, Jacob Berger, questions her about a cold case. Then there are questions about a fire in the library at her grandparents' house and an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter, as well as threatening phone calls and a mysterious illness. Finally a shadowy young man named Shift appears, forcing Taryn and Jacob toward a reckoning felt in more than one world. The Absolute Book is epic, action-packed fantasy in which hidden treasures are recovered, wicked things resurface, birds can talk, and dead sisters are a living force. It is a book of journeys and returns, from contemporary England to Auckland, New Zealand; from a magical fairyland to Purgatory. Above all, it is a declaration of love for stories and the ways in which they shape our worlds and create gods out of morals.
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ISBN |
9780593296738 |
Released NZ |
9 Feb 2021 |
Publisher |
Viking |
Format |
Hardback |
Alternate Format(s) |
View All (3 other possible title(s) available)
|
Availability |
Available for pre-order, ships once internationally released 9 Feb 2021
|
Full details for this title
ISBN-13 |
9780593296738 |
|
Stock |
Release date is 9 February 2021 |
Status |
Available for pre-order, ships once internationally released 9 Feb 2021 |
|
Publisher |
Viking |
Imprint |
Viking |
Released |
9 Feb 2021
|
Publication Country |
United States |
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Format |
Hardback
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|
Author(s) |
By Knox, Elizabeth |
Category |
Modern Fiction Fantasy Fiction NZ, Maori & Pasifika New Zealand
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|
Number of Pages |
640 |
Dimensions |
Width: 152mm Height: 229mm Spine: 40mm |
Dewey Code |
823.914 |
Weight |
911g |
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Interest Age |
General Audience |
Reading Age |
General Audience |
Library of Congress |
Fantasy fiction, Epic fiction, Novels |
NBS Text |
Science Fiction & Fantasy |
ONIX Text |
General/trade |
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Awards, Reviews & Star Ratings
NZ Review |
Praise for Elizabeth Knox and The Absolute Book Every once in a while, as a reader, you run into one of those books that is just too big for your mind to entirely take in. . . . It's quite bracing to come up against the hard edge of your own imagination as you try to pursue a visionary author through the limitless expanse of hers. This is all to say that the experience of reading the New Zealand writer Elizabeth Knox's contemporary fantasy novel The Absolute Book reminded me of how I felt reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell or The Left Hand of Darkness or His Dark Materials or, to move out of genre, Life After Life or The Underground Railroad. I felt that my position in relation to the book's capacious intellect and imagination and moral purpose was a vertiginous one. It was thrilling and frightening. --Dan Kois, Slate I love all of Elizabeth Knox's books. --Kelly Link Explosive and surprising . . . quite brilliant. --The Spinoff (NZ) The Absolute Book's power is in the skill and pace of Knox's storytelling, the perfect spinning of the intricate plot, the sharp dialogue and luminous evocation of place. Knox's landscapes are vivid and beautiful, both the earthly and the otherworldly. I was carried along without objection, and the great pleasure for me, along with the simple one of wanting to know what would happen next, was the feeling that my realist mind had been flattened out - that I had, temporarily, due to the intensity and momentum of the narrative, made some kind of mental shift, lost the compulsion to search for psychological depth (always a source of disquiet) and gone back to an earlier imaginative state, one that pulsed with mysterious possibility. --Charlotte Grimshaw, Noted (NZ) An angelic book, an apocalyptic book, an astounding book. --Francis Spufford, author of Golden Hill The master is present. To read Knox on such a huge canvas--to be immersed in her worlds, wrapped in her intelligence and craft so completely--is an experience not be missed. Lessing, Le Guin, Knox--books where the best hearts meet the best minds meet the best imaginations are few and far between. The Absolute Book is a triumph of fantasy grounded in the reality and challenges of the moment we live in. --Pip Adam Elizabeth Knox has the most original and lateral literary mind in New Zealand. --Metro Knox is a writer with a gift for describing the colour of the present moment. . . . She lets her language breathe, lets it speak in revelations rather than explanations. --Times Literary Supplement |
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Author's Bio
Elizabeth Knox is the author of seventeen books, including the award-winning novels The Vintner's Luck, Dreamhunter, and Dreamquake, which received awards from the ALA, CCBC, Booklist, and The New York Public Library. An Arts Foundation Laureate, an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and the recipient of the Prime Minister's Award for Fiction, she lives with her husband and son in Wellington, New Zealand, where she teaches a course on world building at Victoria University.
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