The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

Book Overview

The Corn King and the Spring Queen is a tale of murder and revenge and of lasting love set in the Classical world several centuries before Christianity. It opens on the shores of the Black Sea when a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0939149990
• ISBN13: 9780939149995
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Length: 721 Pages
• Weight: 1.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A magical book which is as brutal as it is dreamy

Naomi Mitchison¹s masterful recreation of ancient Scythia must surely stand as one of the most enduring historical novels of the century. In clear, pristine prose (which reminds me of Ursula LeGuin), Mitchison describes the mystical, sometimes horrible, world of her protagonist Erif Der (Red fire backwards). I first stumbled across this long novel in 1988 while at university. Rereading it last year was a sheer pleasure. The old-fashioned, very British, tone of the writing is not in the slightest bit off-putting. Here is a remarkable writer at the height of her powers. Like Ursula LeGuin, again, Mitchison has the uncanny ability to transport her readers to alien cutures and to make these foreign worlds, and the people who live there, as relevant as they are mesmerising. If you haven¹t experienced Naomi Mitchison before, then I can¹t think of a better place to start than with The Corn King and the Spring Queen.