Arcadia

Jim Crace

04 January 2008
9780330453332
384 pages

Synopsis

Victor, an eighty-year-old multimillionaire, surveys his empire from the remoteness of his cloud-capped penthouse. Expensively insulated from the outside world, he nonetheless finds that memories of his impoverished childhood will not be kept so easily at bay. Focusing on the one area of vitality and chaos that remains in the streets below him, he formulates a plan to leave a mark on the city – one as indelible and disruptive as the mark the city left on him.

Victor, an eighty-year-old multimillionaire, surveys his empire from the remoteness of his cloud-capped penthouse. Expensively insulated from the outside world, he nonetheless finds that memories of his impoverished childhood will not be kept so easily at bay. Focusing on the one area of vitality and chaos that remains in the streets below him, he formulates a plan to leave a mark on the city – one as indelible and disruptive as the mark the city left on him.

‘Presents Crace’s heavily politicised vision at its most ambitious and also at its most Ballard-like’ Irish Times
‘A deeply satisfying read, in which each well-turned phrase resounds in every finely tuned sentence’ Mail on Sunday
‘A celebration of the modern city . . . in such vivid prose that you can almost see the bloom on the peaches, taste the sun-ripened oranges and smell the coffee at the market traders’ stalls’ Sunday Times