The Face of the Lion (1976)
John Blackburn
With a new introduction by Greg Gbur
Book Description
A remote area of the Scottish Highlands has been cordoned off and is being guarded by an army of I.R.A. mercenaries and ex-Nazi thugs. Local rumour has it that eccentric laird James Fraser Clyde is looking for buried treasure, but the British government fears he might be building an atomic bomb in an attempt to win Scottish independence. Yet the truth may be something far worse: a mysterious contagion is turning the locals into deformed, grunting creatures, with a single-minded urge to kill and spread their infection. Sir Marcus Levin, the Nobel Prize-winning bacteriologist, must find a way to halt the epidemic before it gets out of hand and destroys the world. But what is causing it? Who started it, and why? And can it be stopped?
First published in 1976, John Blackburn’s horror thriller The Face of the Lion capitalized on the popularity of apocalyptic zombie tales in the wake of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). This edition includes a new introduction by Greg Gbur, which situates Blackburn’s novel within the tradition of zombie literature.
John Blackburn
With a new introduction by Greg Gbur
Book Description
A remote area of the Scottish Highlands has been cordoned off and is being guarded by an army of I.R.A. mercenaries and ex-Nazi thugs. Local rumour has it that eccentric laird James Fraser Clyde is looking for buried treasure, but the British government fears he might be building an atomic bomb in an attempt to win Scottish independence. Yet the truth may be something far worse: a mysterious contagion is turning the locals into deformed, grunting creatures, with a single-minded urge to kill and spread their infection. Sir Marcus Levin, the Nobel Prize-winning bacteriologist, must find a way to halt the epidemic before it gets out of hand and destroys the world. But what is causing it? Who started it, and why? And can it be stopped?
First published in 1976, John Blackburn’s horror thriller The Face of the Lion capitalized on the popularity of apocalyptic zombie tales in the wake of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). This edition includes a new introduction by Greg Gbur, which situates Blackburn’s novel within the tradition of zombie literature.
reviews
‘John Blackburn is today's master of horror.’ -Times Literary Supplement
‘Achieves a delicious sense of nausea.’ - The Guardian
‘[G]iant monsters . . . products of a mutation . . . bubonic plague!’ - The Observer
‘He is certainly the best British novelist in his field and deserves the widest recognition.’ - Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural
‘Achieves a delicious sense of nausea.’ - The Guardian
‘[G]iant monsters . . . products of a mutation . . . bubonic plague!’ - The Observer
‘He is certainly the best British novelist in his field and deserves the widest recognition.’ - Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural
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BOOK DETAILS
ISBN: 1939140439 ISBN-13: 978-1939140432 $16.99 US, 132 pp. Trade paper Published 2013 |
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
John Blackburn was born in 1923 in the village of Corbridge, England, the second son of a clergyman. He started attending Haileybury College near London in 1937, but his education was interrupted by the onset of World War II; the shadow of the war, and that of Nazi Germany, would later play a role in many of his works. He served as a radio officer during the war in the Mercantile Marine from 1942 to 1945, and resumed his education afterwards at Durham University, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1949. Blackburn taught for several years after that, first in London and then in Berlin, and married Joan Mary Clift in 1950. Returning to London in 1952, he took over the management of Red Lion Books.
It was there that Blackburn began writing, and the immediate success in 1958 of his first novel, A Scent of New-Mown Hay, led him to take up a career as a writer full-time. He and his wife also maintained an antiquarian bookstore, a secondary career that would inform some of Blackburn’s later work. A prolific author, Blackburn would write nearly 30 novels between 1958 and 1985; most of these were horror and thrillers, but also included one historical novel set in Roman times, The Flame and the Wind (1967). He died in 1993.
It was there that Blackburn began writing, and the immediate success in 1958 of his first novel, A Scent of New-Mown Hay, led him to take up a career as a writer full-time. He and his wife also maintained an antiquarian bookstore, a secondary career that would inform some of Blackburn’s later work. A prolific author, Blackburn would write nearly 30 novels between 1958 and 1985; most of these were horror and thrillers, but also included one historical novel set in Roman times, The Flame and the Wind (1967). He died in 1993.