What do You think about The Scorpion God: Three Short Novels (1973)?
Libro con tres historias que se dan en el pasado. La primera se desarrolla en el antiguo Egipto y es la que requiere más atención, es algo confusa, por lo menos fue la que me pareció un poco más difícil de leer que las otras historias. Clonc Clonc, la segunda historia se dan en la era de las cavernas y muestra como las mujeres ya ejercian un poder asolapado sobre los hombres que son los cazadores. Y la tercera en la antigua Roma, la que se mejor se deja leer pues trata de un inventor que crea una maquina de vapor y otros inventos, y que lo ponen en algunos aprietos ya que se los da a conocer al emperador. El final es algo curioso.
—Paul
Three novellas in one volume, each a trip into history, and yet only the third is to a simply rendered past: Golding alienates the reader from easy recognition by his use of language. You are forced to see the world through the eyes of the narrative. Of course in many ways this is a phantom - we cannot really step into the past and see their world(s) as our ancestors did, but Golding's approach, replacing familiar words with neologisms, renders the past a strange place. Like The Inheritors, The Scorpion God is a wonderful book that should be better known. Golding won the Nobel prize in literature, and that is not given for a single novel: it is an injustice that he is known chiefly for the Lord of the Flies when his other works are at least as good.
—Simon
As an Author William Golding is a Nobel Prize winner. He is primarily famed for 'The Lord of the Flies' and little else, whereas he seems to have authored several equally well written, enquiring, imaginative stories that probe and ask intelligent questions.In this book we have three novellas, all essentially the narratives of outsiders; unlikely people of insight, anti-heroes, visionaries, foreigners and social outcasts. Each is in possession of knowledge or instinct that is transcendent of their cultural setting/standing and so puts them at odds with their surroundings; in the role of the subversive or the underdog, regarded with derision or suspicion by their peers and misplaced in their circumstance, maybe even ahead of their time!Three narratives, three different, historically inspired cultures: each superbly recreated, each with believable characters and settings. In around 60 pages of prose Mr Golding manages to take us to Pharaoic Egypt, primitive sub Saharan Africa and Ancient Rome respectively, each created and envisioned with realism and appropriate atmosphere whilst building tension and crescendo into the narrative with his usual skilful use of poetically descriptive, economical prose.
—Peter
