Fortnight's Anger

by Roger Scruton

After the death of Kenneth Fortnight's mother, his family begins to fall apart

Hardcover

First published January 28, 1981

About the author

Sir Roger Scruton was a writer and philosopher who has published more than forty books in philosophy, aesthetics and politics. He was a fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He taught in both England and America and was a Visiting Professor at Department of Philosophy and Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, he was also a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C.

In 2015 he published two books, The Disappeared and later in the autumn, Fools Frauds and Firebrands. Fools Frauds and Firebrands is an update of Thinkers of the New Left published, to widespread outrage, in 1986. It includes new chapters covering Lacan, Deleuze and Badiou and some timely thoughts about the historians and social thinkers who led British intellectuals up the garden path during the last decades, including Eric Hobsbawm and Ralph Miliband.

In 2016 he again published two books, Confessions of A Heretic (a collection of essays) and The Ring of Truth, about Wagner’s Ring cycle, which was widely and favourably reviewed. In 2017 he published On Human Nature (Princeton University Press), which was again widely reviewed, and contains a distillation of his philosophy. He also published a response to Brexit, Where We Are (Bloomsbury).

Reviews

[Almachius]

I've been an admirer of Roger Scruton for some time, and find myself going back to him for wisdom on any number of issues philosophical, political, aesthetic, but, for whatever reason, I had never read his fiction. Last year I decided to begin rectifying that and got this used copy online. Having read it now, I'm surprised it's no longer in print.

Fortnight's Anger is Scruton's first published novel, or so I believe, but it is not the work of a first time writer. It feels very much like an impressionist painting, or an intimate memoir narrated masterfully in the third person. It is quite moving at times, and can't be rushed. The selected detail in descriptions of characters, mannerisms, objects, and places alone are worth a second read.

I look forward to returning to this curiosity again after I've explored the author's more recent fiction. Best served late at night with a red Burgundy, or real ale, and perhaps a pork pie.