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Hallucinating Foucault
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message 1:
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Diane , Armchair Tour Guide
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rated it 4 stars
Jul 15, 2017 03:22AM
Start discussion here for Hallucinating Foucault by Patricia Duncker.
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message 2:
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Diane , Armchair Tour Guide
(last edited Jul 15, 2017 03:28AM)
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rated it 4 stars
Summary from the publisherA young unnamed narrator sets forth from Cambridge on a quest. He is to rescue the subject of his doctoral research, Paul Michel, the brilliant but mad writer, from incarceration in a mental institution in France. What ensues is a drama of terrible intimacy and tenderness played out one hot and humid summer in Paris and in the south of France. Hallucinating Foucault is a literary thriller that explores with consummate mastery the passionate relationship between reader and writer, between the factual and the fictional, between sanity and madness. In blurring these boundaries, Patricia Duncker has written a novel of astonishing power and beauty.
About the Author from British Council
Patricia Duncker was born in Kingston, Jamaica on 29 June 1951. She attended school in England and, after a period spent working in Germany, she read English at Newnham College, Cambridge. She studied for a D.Phil. in English and German Romanticism at St Hugh's College, Oxford. From 1993-2002, she taught Literature at the University of Aberystwyth, and from 2002-2006, has been Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, teaching the MA in Prose Fiction. In January 2007, she moved to the University of Manchester where she is Professor of Modern Literature.
I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. The language is beautiful and it is a well-written and paced book. It is hard to say much about the story without giving away anything, so I won't go into the details. I think the author did a great job with character development and demonstrating the relationships between characters, especially the relationship between reader and author. Duncker artfully blurred the lines between sanity and madness, and even between genders. There is also an unexpected twist in the end. Definitely a book that stays with you.
