| Summary: |
East Germany, 1989. The government of the so-called German Democratic Republic is stumbling through the last months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. But in the shadows, the old antagonisms continue between spies and counter-spies, double and triple agents. And a young Canadian intelligence officer, Frank Carpenter, finds himself drawn into a mystery which leads him to a bizarre and personal form of German Reunification. The Griffin in the Griffin’s Wood is a gripping spy novel, expertly set against the backdrop of a critical moment in modern European history, and at the same time a playful game with the genre conventions of the spy novel itself. The novel marks a decided departure for Governor-General’s Award-winning author Stephen Scobie, previously known for his long narrative poems (McAlmon’s Chinese Opera; RLS: At the World’s End), and for his extensive critical work on Canadian literature, as well as on figures such as Georges Braque and Bob Dylan. Thrilling, evocative, and always ironically self-aware, The Griffin in the Griffin’s Wood offers esoteric pleasures to appeal to any reader. Stephen Scobie is a Canadian poet, critic, and scholar. Born in Carnoustie, Scotland, Scobie relocated to Canada in 1965. He earned a PhD from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver after which he taught at the University of Alberta and at the University of Victoria. Scobie is a founding editor of Longspoon Press, an elected member of the Royal Society of Canada, and the recipient of the 1980 Governor General’s Award for McAlmon’s Chinese Opera (1980) and the 1986 Prix Gabrielle Roy for Canadian Criticism. -description from Ekstasis Editions. |
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