BOOK DETAILS
Trade paper ISBN-13: 978-1941147658 List Price: $17.99 U.S. Pages: 232 Published: 2015 |
The Great Wash (1953)
Gerald Kersh Book Description
Journalist George Oaks and his friend Albert Kemp, a mystery novelist, are on their way to meet their friend, the celebrated philosopher Dr. Monacelli. But when a clerical mix-up leads to their meeting the American gangster Monty Cello instead, Oaks and Kemp quickly find themselves caught up in a bizarre and dangerous plot involving a murdered reporter, a missing scientist, and a group of powerful madmen with a plan to destroy the world as we know it. It’s a race against time as Oaks and Kemp must infiltrate the villains’ stronghold and save humanity before it’s too late! Equal parts hard-boiled crime novel and apocalyptic science fiction tale, The Great Wash (1953) is one of the most exciting novels by Gerald Kersh (1911-1968), who is best known for his classics Night and the City (1938) and Fowlers End (1957). Fowlers End and four volumes of Kersh’s strange and brilliant short fiction are also available from Valancourt. |
reviews
“An extravaganza . . . fertile invention and forceful style . . . Mr. Kersh’s many admirers will undoubtedly devour this highly flavoured hotch-potch with avidity.” – Julian Maclaren-Ross, Sunday Times
“A notable contribution to the few actually terrifying tales of science fiction.” – Saturday Review
“[F]irst-rate Kersh, richly peopled with the odd bit roles he sketches so well and written with style and individuality.” – Anthony Boucher, New York Herald Tribune
“Sometimes funny, sometimes nightmarish, always first-class entertainment.” – Basil Davenport, New York Times
“A notable contribution to the few actually terrifying tales of science fiction.” – Saturday Review
“[F]irst-rate Kersh, richly peopled with the odd bit roles he sketches so well and written with style and individuality.” – Anthony Boucher, New York Herald Tribune
“Sometimes funny, sometimes nightmarish, always first-class entertainment.” – Basil Davenport, New York Times
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Gerald Kersh was born in Teddington-on-Thames, near London, in 1911. He left school and took on a series of jobs—salesman, baker, fish-and-chips cook, nightclub bouncer, freelance newspaper reporter—and at the same time was writing his first two novels. His career began inauspiciously with the release of his first novel, Jews Without Jehovah, published when Kersh was 25: the book was withdrawn after only 80 copies were sold when Kersh’s relatives brought a libel suit against him and his publisher. He gained notice with his third novel, Night and the City (1938) and for the next thirty years published numerous novels and short story collections, including the novel Fowlers End (1957), which some critics, including Harlan Ellison, believe to be his best.
Kersh fought in the Second World War as a member of the Coldstream Guards before being discharged in 1943 after having both his legs broken in a bombing raid. He traveled widely before moving to the United States and becoming an American citizen, because “the Welfare State and confiscatory taxation make it impossible to work over there, if you’re a writer.”
Kersh was a larger than life figure, a big, heavy-set man with piercing black eyes and a fierce black beard, which led him to describe himself proudly as “villainous-looking.” His obituary recounts some of his eccentricities, such as tearing telephone books in two, uncapping beer bottles with his fingernails, bending dimes with his teeth, and ordering strange meals, like “anchovies and figs doused in brandy” for breakfast. Kersh lived the last several years of his life in the mountain community of Cragsmoor, in New York, and died at age 57 in 1968 of cancer of the throat.
Kersh fought in the Second World War as a member of the Coldstream Guards before being discharged in 1943 after having both his legs broken in a bombing raid. He traveled widely before moving to the United States and becoming an American citizen, because “the Welfare State and confiscatory taxation make it impossible to work over there, if you’re a writer.”
Kersh was a larger than life figure, a big, heavy-set man with piercing black eyes and a fierce black beard, which led him to describe himself proudly as “villainous-looking.” His obituary recounts some of his eccentricities, such as tearing telephone books in two, uncapping beer bottles with his fingernails, bending dimes with his teeth, and ordering strange meals, like “anchovies and figs doused in brandy” for breakfast. Kersh lived the last several years of his life in the mountain community of Cragsmoor, in New York, and died at age 57 in 1968 of cancer of the throat.