Titus Groan

Dreamlike and macabre, Mervyn Peake’s extraordinary novel Titus Groan—first in the Gormenghast Trilogy—is one of the most astonishing and fantastic works in modern fiction. As the novel opens, Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born. He stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle. Meanwhile, far away and in the kitchen, a servant named Steerpike escapes his drudgework and begins an auspicious ascent to power. Inside of Gormenghast, all events are predetermined by complex rituals, the origins of which are lost in time—and the castle is peopled by dark characters in half-lit corridors. Introduction by Anthony Burgess Praise for the Gormenghast Trilogy: “There is nothing in literature like Mervyn Peake’s remarkable Gormenghast novels . . . They were crafted by a master, who was also an artist, and they take us to an ancient castle as big as a city, with heroes and villains and people larger than life that are impossible to forget.” —Neil Gaiman “[Peake’s books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience.” —C. S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia “His inventiveness, his ingenuity, and his humor are astonishing.” — San Francisco Chronicle