The Gormenghast Trilogy

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Mervyn Peake combined a true artist?s eye with a magnificent ear for language. The result was the creation of a unique modern classic: the strange and fabulous world of Gormenghast.

Gormenghast is a world into which you will find yourself irresistibly drawn; a feast of the imagination where you may gorge yourself to the full. Every inhabitant knows his place, from the Grey Scrubbers who fulfil their hereditary calling in cleaning the Great Kitchen, to melancholy Sepulchrave himself, Earl of Groan. It is a world governed by ceremony, where nonagenarian Sourdust, lord of the library and student of Groan lore, must instruct the Earl in the strange and symbolic activities to be undertaken each day, as detailed in the great tomes of ritual.

Here Gertrude, Countess of Groan, lies in bed, her red hair ?clustered upon the pillows like burning snakes?, surrounded by hundreds of white cats. Her passionate daughter Fuchsia, ?intemperate, suspicious and credulous all in a day?, lurks alone in her attic, while Sepulchrave?s sisters Clarice and Cora, half-witted twins, brood darkly in the Room of Roots. Next in social order come Doctor Prunesquallor ? intelligent, kindly, insufferably verbose ? and his bony sister Irma, who lays siege to the assembled Professors in a ?gown of a thousand frills, with its corsage of hand-painted parrots?. Around the Family, a host of faithful retainers go about their business: Fuchsia?s devoted nurse, Nanny Slagg, self-important and resplendent in her best hat with the glass grapes; Rottcodd the curator, fast asleep in the Hall of the Bright Carvings, created by the denizens of the Outer Dwellings. In the Great Kitchen Abiatha Swelter, head chef ? ?a catalyptic mass of wine-drenched blubber? ? nurses his hatred for Mr Flay, first servant of the Earl, above whose cracking knee-joints can be found a heart fiercely loyal to Gormenghast.

Into this stagnant world is born Titus, seventy-seventh earl. Violet-eyed and full of life, from his earliest babyhood he shows a tendency to blaspheme against the fundamental tenets of Gormenghast, as when he violates the Book of Baptism at his christening. Yet on the very day of his birth, another act of revolution is perpetrated ? an act which will have consequences far more dangerous to Gormenghast than Titus?s childish misdemeanours. As Swelter celebrates the birth of the new heir, the kitchen boy Steerpike, eyes ?dark and hot with a mature hatred?, escapes from his predestined position and begins a vertiginous climb across the roofs of the Castle. It is to become a social climb of devilish manipulation which will lead Steerpike to a position of immense power within Gormenghast ? and woe betide anyone who attempts to get in his way.