In The Savage God Al Alvarez confronts the controversial and often taboo area of human behaviour: suicide. He embraces both the cultural attitudes and the development of theoretical studies, giving a broad basis for his examination of suicide through the standpoint of literature, and follows the black thread leading from Dante, through Donne and the Romantic Agony, to Dada and the Savage God at the heart of modern literature. As a framework for his study, Alvarez gives his personal accounts of two suicide attempts: that of Sylvia Plath, the gifted young American poet who took her life in 1963, and his own unsuccessful attempt, to form the most important title on this subject yet published.

About the Author

Al Alvarez, poet, critic, novelist, sportsman, poker player, has for seventy years been hard to categorize. Author of over twenty books including POKER and THE BIGGEST GAME IN TOWN he is one of the great writers of the 20th Century.

Prizes

'Widely admired ... Alvarez does what Levi says: he writes what the politeness and prevarications of speech might have defeated' GUARDIAN 'To write about suicide ... to transform the subject into something beautiful - this is the forbidding task that Alvarez has set for himself ... he has succeeded' NEW YORK TIMES 'A beautifully written book, full of poetic truths. It holds the reader's attention because the author is deeply committed to his subject ... it adds a new dimension to the perspective of suicide' NEW SOCIETY

Reviews

'To write about suicide... to transform the subject into something beautiful - this is the foreboding task that Alvarez set for himself... he has succeeded' New York Times