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A gothic tale becomes all too shockingly real in this mesmerizing magnum opus by the acclaimed author of FEED. It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by... read more

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  • “"What are those papers?" asked Mr. Sharpe. "I am a fashionable man," said Bono. "It's a catalogue of fashions." Mr. Sharpe held out his hand. Bono handed over the sheaf. "There ain't nothing illegal," he said, "about being devilish handsome." ... I went to the table where the papers had been left. I lifted up the first, blank page, and surveyed those beneath, to see, as Bono quoth, what the man on the street was wearing. It was a catalogue of horrors. Page after page of Negroes in bridles, strapped to walls, advertisements for shackles, reports of hangings of slaves for theft or insubordination. ... For the first time, I saw masks of iron with metal mouth-bits for the slave to suck to enforce absolute silence. I saw razored necklaces, collars of spikes that supported the head. ... Mr. Gitney burned Bono's fashion catalogue an hour later. "Let us rid ourselves," he said, "of this noisome object." But I could not rid myself of it. It was the common property of us all.”
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  • At long last, you may no longer distinguish what binds you from what is
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  • the human was made in love for the operations of magnanimity and fairness, reason and excellence, and that we all, unfettered by passions, could work together for the perfection of man.
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  • Empedocles claims that in utero, our backbone is one long solid; and that through the constriction of the womb and the punishments of birth it must be snapped again and again to form our vertebræ; that for the child to have a spine, his back must first be broken.
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  • “A man is known by his deeds.” “Oh, that’s sure,” said Bono. “Just like a house is known by its deeds. The deeds say who owns it, who sold it, and who’ll be buying a new one when it gets knocked down.”
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  • He said, “I cannot fight — nor can I refrain — without imputations of savagery.” And he finished, in a voice not of defiance, but suffused with realization: “I am no one. I am not a man. I am nothing.”
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  • for strangers know more of us, and can judge of us more without reproach than ever those we love.
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First Sentence edit see section history

I was raised in a gaunt house with a garden; my earliest recollections are of floating lights in the apple-trees.

Table of Contents edit see section history

I. The Transit of Venus
II. The Pox Party
III. Liberty & Property
IV. The Great Chain of Being

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 1 of 2 in The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. (standard series)

Followed by The Kingdom on the Waves.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. M. T. Anderson (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: CANDLEWICK PRESS
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 2006
ISBN: 0763624020
Page Count: 368

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