INDOCTRINAIRE

NEL paperback, 1973 reprint. Cover artwork by Bruce Pennington.

"In the very depths of the densest jungle in Brazil, there exists a circular plain of stubble. A perfect circle. 

This is the Panalto district, and no man has ever come out of it alive. Elias Wentik might, perhaps, be the exception. He finds himself imprisoned in the very centre of the plain, subject to humiliation and bizarre sessions of interrogation. And this visit, so completely contemporary in its paranoid vision of strangeness, has revealed to him the incredible secret of the Panalto. It exists two hundred years in the future."

FUGUE FOR A DARKENING ISLAND

NEL paperback, September 1973. Cover artist uncredited.

FUGUE - a glimpse into the future of Britain. At a time when the country is caught by civil conflict between a right-wing government and the liberal element, a third group arrives - refugee Africans from a continent devastated by nuclear attack. The country is ripe for a three-way civil war. Total breakdown in communications quickly follows, and a nightmare situation grips the community. 

Alan Whitman, the central character of this frightening story, represents the view of the man on the street. How will he cope with this situation when he has opted out all his life, from political, personal and moral decisions? 

Christopher Priest's second novel consolidates his place among the most brilliant and imaginative of the younger writers of today, already established by his earlier work 'Indoctrinaire'."