They
Kay Dick
(Author)
Lucy Scholes
(Afterword by)
Description
A dark, dystopian portrait of artists struggling to resist violent suppression--"queer, English, a masterpiece." (Hilton Als) Set amid the rolling hills and the sandy shingle beaches of coastal Sussex, this disquieting novel depicts an England in which bland conformity is the terrifying order of the day. Violent gangs roam the country destroying art and culture and brutalizing those who resist the purge. As the menacing "They" creep ever closer, a loosely connected band of dissidents attempt to evade the chilling mobs, but it's only a matter of time until their luck runs out. Winner of the 1977 South-East Arts Literature Prize, Kay Dick's They is an uncanny and prescient vision of a world hostile to beauty, emotion, and the individual.
Product Details
Price
$18.00
$16.74
Publisher
McNally Editions
Publish Date
February 01, 2022
Pages
128
Dimensions
5.0 X 8.4 X 0.4 inches | 0.45 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781946022288
BISAC Categories:
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
About the Author
Kay Dick (1915-2001) was the first female director of an English publishing house, promoted to the role at the age of twenty-six and mixing with what she described "a louche set" that included Ivy Compton-Burnett, Stevie Smith, and Muriel Spark. From the 1940s through the '60s, she and her long-term partner, the novelist Kathleen Farrell, were at the heart of the London literary scene. She published seven novels, a study of the commedia dell'arte, and two volumes of literary interviews. Lucy Scholes is a critic who lives in London, and is an editor at McNally Editions.
Reviews
"Queer, English, a masterpiece."--Hilton Als
"They is spare, troubling, eerily familiar. It evokes Yoko Ogawa's Revenge, or Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men, occupying a space between dystopia and horror. The lush landscapes are haunted by profoundly unsettling details about the forces at work--'It was no good listening for footsteps, ' the narrator tells us, 'they wore no shoes'--and all of it a backdrop for endless questions about art: What does it mean to create for no audience?"--Carmen Maria Machado "The Guardian"
"It's incredibly unusual to find a book this good that has been this profoundly forgotten."--Sam Knight "New Yorker"
"[Kay Dick] is a writer who who respects human beings even in their pettiness or confusion; who regards each of them as a worthy object of study and even tenderness, and who devotes as much space and care to the description of what one might call a thoroughly trivial person as to a creature of heroic design." --Vernon Fane "The Sphere"
"Kay Dick's mind is a delicate instrument, aware, sensitive, intelligent, alive to every shade of feeling and sensation."--L. P. Hartley "Sunday Times"
"The dream setting [of They] is cleverly handled, with its shifts of scene and time and its underlying air of menace."--Mary Sullivan "Sunday Telegraph"
"Strong stuff, beautifully written, to make a man look behind him in fear and dread when walking down a leafy lane."--Philip Howard "The Times"
"Both a dystopian fable and a stealth memoir . . . Like all robust allegories, They grants the reader the freedom to imagine any number of vivid referents for the opaque."--Melissa Anderson "Bookforum"
"They is spare, troubling, eerily familiar. It evokes Yoko Ogawa's Revenge, or Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men, occupying a space between dystopia and horror. The lush landscapes are haunted by profoundly unsettling details about the forces at work--'It was no good listening for footsteps, ' the narrator tells us, 'they wore no shoes'--and all of it a backdrop for endless questions about art: What does it mean to create for no audience?"--Carmen Maria Machado "The Guardian"
"It's incredibly unusual to find a book this good that has been this profoundly forgotten."--Sam Knight "New Yorker"
"[Kay Dick] is a writer who who respects human beings even in their pettiness or confusion; who regards each of them as a worthy object of study and even tenderness, and who devotes as much space and care to the description of what one might call a thoroughly trivial person as to a creature of heroic design." --Vernon Fane "The Sphere"
"Kay Dick's mind is a delicate instrument, aware, sensitive, intelligent, alive to every shade of feeling and sensation."--L. P. Hartley "Sunday Times"
"The dream setting [of They] is cleverly handled, with its shifts of scene and time and its underlying air of menace."--Mary Sullivan "Sunday Telegraph"
"Strong stuff, beautifully written, to make a man look behind him in fear and dread when walking down a leafy lane."--Philip Howard "The Times"
"Both a dystopian fable and a stealth memoir . . . Like all robust allegories, They grants the reader the freedom to imagine any number of vivid referents for the opaque."--Melissa Anderson "Bookforum"
