Black Light - by Galway Kinnell (Paperback)

About the Book

"Black Light is a voyage of discovery and transformation. Set in Iran, it tells the story of Jamshid, a quiet simple carpet mender, who one day suddenly commits a murder and is forced to flee. With this violent act his old life ends and a strange new existence begins. Galway Kinnell combines his gift for precise imagery with a storyteller's skill in this journey across the Iranian desert-away from the fragile self-righteous virtues of adopted moral tradition, into the disorder and sexual confusion of agonizing self-knowledge. First published in 1966 by Houghton Mifflin, this extensively revised paperback edition of Black Light brings a distinguished novel back into print "--

Book Synopsis

Black Light is a voyage of discovery and transformation. Set in Iran, it tells the story of Jamshid, a quiet simple carpet mender, who one day suddenly commits a murder and is forced to flee. With this violent act his old life ends and a strange new existence begins.

Galway Kinnell combines his gift for precise imagery with a storyteller's skill in this journey across the Iranian desert--away from the fragile self-righteous virtues of adopted moral tradition, into the disorder and sexual confusion of agonizing self-knowledge. First published in 1966 by Houghton Mifflin, this extensively revised paperback edition of Black Light brings a distinguished novel back into print.

Review Quotes

"The writing is condensed, austere and effective . . . " -The Atlantic

"[Black Light] is poetic in its pared down language and precise sensuous imagery." -Times Literary Supplement

"Black Light shows that more poets should write novels... Running throughout the short novel is a landscape that feels both unforgiving and comforting that is mitigated by a quick moving and devastating tale of man trying to find peace in any form it will present itself in."--Spectrum Culture

About the Author

Galway Kinnell was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1927. A renowned poet and translator, he is the author of What a Kingdom It Was, Body Rags, Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock, Book of Nightmares and The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World and Mortal Acts, Mortal Words.