About the Book
NOMINATED FOR THE 2011 IMPAC DUBLIN AWARD
To read two extracts from Joseph's Box, click here. To buy the book, scroll down to the bottom of this page.
WARNING!
This novel breaks all the rules of conventional novel-writing, and should not be attempted by the faint-hearted!
'
It's an incredibly dense book. Saadi has researched widely and deeply for this, weaving together philosophy, mythology, history, class, politics, folk memories, psychedelia, Sufism and all kinds of arcane and esoteric knowledge ... Saadi's style, employing long sentences, an extensive vocabulary and endless digressions, is meant to evoke a symphonic feel, but also to link it to the seeds of the story ... that sense of ambition was reminiscent of first encountering, many years ago, Alasdair Gray's Lanark.' Sunday Herald
'One of this country's finest writers... The prose here is colourful and deeply intelligent, but also, crucially, slow. Saadi forces his readers to slow down, specialising in describing the tiniest details of human interaction, focusing on every thought and half-thought that zips through the minds of his creations...Complicated, many-headed, vibrant ... a fresh way of looking at the world. And isn't that what fiction is for?' Rodge Glass, Scottish Review of Books
'This is a big book, in every way: it is excessive, extravagant, exuberant, exhilarating, erotic, esoteric, entertaining, entrancing and eccentric; and like the boxes that give it a structure, of sorts, it contains layer upon layer of allusions and connections. The narrative sweeps across continents, and the cultural references include everything from hip-hop to classical verse forms of the Moghul emperors ... I hope it will find itself on the holiday reading lists of the curious and the open-minded looking for something quite different.'
Dougal Jeffries, RCGP Journal
'Linguistically, this is a word hoard, an "epic of mingling and mixing" ... A pliable, deceptive and maddeningly elegant close-up of a universe; and perhaps a truer, if splintered, reflection of this unfathomable world.'
Scotland on Sunday
The book
Recently bereaved Zuleikha Chashm Framareza MacBeth wades into the Clyde one morning and recovers a large box, with which she becomes obsessed. The discovery brings her together with Alex, a lute-playing clerk, and they manage to open the box – only to find six more boxes inside, each of which can be opened only by following a cryptic clue. The clues lead Zulie and Alex on a physical and emotional journey, modulated through music, across Glasgow, Argyllshire, Lincolnshire, Sicily, Lahore, and finally the frozen peaks of the ‘Roof of the World’. Meanwhile Zulie, a troubled doctor, has been sucked into the vortex of the terminally ill Archie MacPherson, an ambivalent, visionary Second World War airman and Glasgow shipyard worker. In the manner of a lord of misrule, Archie’s dying consciousness begins to shape and ultimately define Zuleikha and Alex’s quest as they progress through the seven Sufi stations of sacrifice, truth, power, obedience, life, memory and beauty. Drawing on a wide framework of cultural and spiritual reference, uniquely blending contemporary Western literature and traditional Arabo-Persian storytelling, this is an extraordinary and ambitious novel with a visceral sensuality and subtle touches of magical realism, in the vein of Okri, Murakami and Pamuk.
ISBN 9781906120443; trade pbk 216x138mm (with coloured endpapers); 688 pages
Joseph's Box is also available as an e-book via the publishers' website at a special price of £7. (ISBN 9781906120818)
Buy the book
Buy Joseph's Box now, direct from the publisher via this website at only £10.99 i.e. at a discount of over 20% (RRP is £13.99). We despatch same or next day.
Postage & packing is free in the UK. However, this is a heavy, high paper-quality, 688-page large format trade paperback novel with coloured endpapers. Overseas air mail postage is therefore extremely expensive. The P&P charge that will be added on for copies sent to Europe is £3.50 per copy (making a total of £14.49 per copy ordered); for the rest of the world it is £8.50 (making a total of £19.49 per copy ordered). Please note that we have discounted P&P prices too; actual costs are £5.50 and £10.60, respectively!
If you are overseas and interested in buying Joseph's Box, you may care to consider purchase of the e-book, available at www.tworavenspress.com (the ordering page will open in a new window) for only £7 worldwide. The e-book, in e-pub format, can be read on Sony Reader devices, and on your computer screen if you download the free Adobe Digital Editions software from Adobe (instructions will be provided!)
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