Description
Title: Hollow Earth
Author: KINSELLA JOHN
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 27/08/2019
Imprint: Transit Lounge Publishing
Price: $30.00
Publishing status: Active
Fascinated by caves and digging holes since childhood,
Manfred discovers a path through to another realm via a Neolithic copper mine
at Mount Gabriel in Schull, Ireland. The world of Hollow Earth, while no
Utopia, is a sophisticated civilisation. Its genderless inhabitants are
respectful of their environment, religious and cultural differences are
accommodated without engendering hate or suspicion, and grain not missile silos
are built. Yet Ari and Zest accompany Manfred back to the surface world. ‘Come
with me and see my world.’
So begins an extraordinary adventure in which the
three wander the Earth like Virgil's Aeneas, Ari and Zest seeking re-entry to
their own world. The Hollow Earthers are shocked at the cruelty and lies of the
surface world, the dieback spreading through the forests. Yet they are seduced
by the world's temptations.
Kinsella's parable
draws on a rich tradition of Hollow Earth literature and science fiction
including Bradshaw's The Goddess of
Atvabar (1892).With strange beauty, its alluring trajectory vividly captures
our 21st century world in crisis. Like Manfred we are often blindly complicit
in the earth's downfall.
‘Happiness is under our feet.’ sings the narrator in this passionate,
layered and compelling new novel.
‘Combining a twenty-first century
sense of planetary peril with a 1970s funkadelic vibe, Hollow Earth reaches to the extremes of our collective breath, its
alpha and omega…this is a novel of exacting self-scrutiny which also
manages to be outrageous fun’ — Nicholas
Birns
ISBN: 9781925760279
Dimension: 234mm X 153mm