The Black House
by Paul Theroux
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Description
Somewhere in the Black House is a presence so intrusive it must be a ghost. Alfred Munday, an anthropologist, and his wife, Emma, have left Africa after a long period in a tiny, remote village. They arrive in an English village deep in the Dorset countryside and almost immediately sense the haunting presence of a lovely woman neither of them can name. Their marriage has been made uneasy by their African experience and they do not confide their suspicions. Emma receives strange commands from show more the spectral woman, but it is left to Alfred to carry out the commands and manage the complex bewilderments of this new village with its mood of threat. In doing so, he begins to understand how his marriage and study have exiled him and how a return home means a return to older fears and desires. --Publisher. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
When Alfred and Emma Munday return from Africa they buy a house in the Dorset countryside. Their marriage is slowly disintergrating and when ghostly occurances start happening to them they don't tell each other about them. This book had great promise but didn't fulfill in my opinion. The plot was great but had a lot of sections that went nowhere. I give this book a B!
An anthropologist and his wife return from Africa to live in a small British village; their failure to settle into their new life is described as a ghost story with heavy psychological overtones. Well written.
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Author Information
113+ Works 32,278 Members
Paul Edward Theroux was born on April 10, 1941 in Medford, Massachusetts and is an acclaimed travel writer. After attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst he joined the Peace Corps and taught in Malawi from 1963 to 1965. He also taught in Uganda at Makerere University and in Singapore at the University of Singapore. Although Theroux has show more also written travel books in general and about various modes of transport, his name is synonymous with the literature of train travel. Theroux's 1975 best-seller, The Great Railway Bazaar, takes the reader through Asia, while his second book about train travel, The Old Patagonian Express (1979), describes his trip from Boston to the tip of South America. His third contribution to the railway travel genre, Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China, won the Thomas Cook Prize for best literary travel book in 1989. His literary output also includes novels, books for children, short stories, articles, and poetry. His novels include Picture Palace (1978), which won the Whitbread Award and The Mosquito Coast (1981), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Theroux is a fellow of both the British Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Geographic Society. His title Lower River made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012. Currently his 2015 book, Deep South , is a bestseller. (Bowker Author Biography) Paul Theroux is the distinguished author of numerous award-winning books, including "The Mosquito Coast," "Kowloon Tong," & "Half Moon Street." (Publisher Provided) show less
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- Popularity
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- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.44)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 7
