Elizabeth Harrower The Watch Tower review, recensie en informatie Australische roman uit 1966. Op deze pagina lees je uitgebreide informatie over de roman The Watch Tower van de uit Australië afkomstige schrijfster Elizabeth Harrower. De Nederlandse vertaling van de roman met als titel De wachttoren is verschenen als L.L. Veen Klassiek uitgave.

Elizabeth Harrower The Watch Tower review en recensie

• “This is a harrowing novel, relentless in its depiction of marital enslavement, spiritual self-destruction and the exploited condition of women in a masculinist society. It reminded me of Zola in its unflinching depiction of two sisters entangled with a moody, violent man, one of them being gradually crushed into subservience, the other struggling desperately to save her own soul. It is a brilliant achievement.” (Michael Dirda, The Washington Post)
• “I read this book twice. Once for sheer pleasure – if pleasure can be the correct term for an experience that is so distressing – and once for the purposes of this review…It left me with the strongest sense I have had for a very long time of the infinite preciousness of consciousness, at whatever cost, and of our terrifying human vulnerability.” (Salley Vickers, Sydney Morning Herald)

The Watch Tower

• Auteur: Elizabeth Harrower (Australië)
• Soort boek: Australische roman uit 1966
• Taal: Engels
• Uitgever: Text Publishing
• Omvang: 352 pagina’s
• Uitgave: paperback / ebook
• Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
• Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van de roman uit 1966 van de Australische schrijfster Elizabeth Harrower

Breaking their poses like trees snapping branches, the women urgently regarded each other, cleared away all signs of work in an instant, examined their souls for defects, in a sense crossed themselves, and waited.

After Laura and Clare are abandoned by their mother, Felix is there to help, even to marry Laura if she will have him. Little by little the two sisters grow complicit with his obsessions, his cruelty, his need to control.

Set in the leafy northern suburbs of Sydney during the 1940s, The Watch Tower is a novel of relentless and acute psychological power.

Elizabeth Harrower was born in Sydney on 8 February 1928 in Newcastle, New South Wales.  She moved to London in 1951. She travelled extensively and began to write fiction. Her first novel Down in the City was published in 1957, and was followed by The Long Prospect a year later. In 1959 she returned to Sydney where she began working for the ABC and as a book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1960 she published The Catherine Wheel, the story of an Australian law student in London, her only novel not set in Sydney. The Watch Tower appeared in 1966. No further novels were published until May 2014 when Harrower’s ‘lost’ novel, In Certain Circles, was released. Her work is austere, intelligent, ruthless in its perceptions about men and women. She was admired by many of her contemporaries, including Patrick White and Christina Stead, and is without doubt among the most important writers of the postwar period in Australia. Elizabeth Harrower died in Sydney on 7 July 2020 at the age of ninety-two.

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