Parzival and the Stone from Heaven: A holy grail romance retold for our time Book

Lindsay Clarke's Parzival and the Stone from Heaven is a hypnotic retelling of the medieval romance of the quest for the Holy Grail. However, Clarke's book is not a novel in the conventional sense, but a free adaptation of Wolfram von Eschenbach's 13th-century story Parzival. Drawing on Eschenbach, Clarke recounts the adventures of the royal-born Parzival, whose name means, "to pierce through the middle". Brought up by a mother crazed with grief at the death of her chivalrous husband on the battlefield, Parzival is initially ignorant of his destiny as a knight who must search for the Holy Grail and unite it with the earth. As Parzival's swashbuckling adventures lead him from ignorance and wounding to insight and healing, he meets King Arthur, the Gawain Knight and the mysterious Fisherman, the failed guardian of the Grail. Clarke takes many liberties with Eschenbach's original, but tells a well-paced story, one whose characters are more archetype than individual. This is why, for Clarke, the story is universal and remains "a contemporary story and a salutary myth for our own troubled and exhilarating times". --Jerry BrottonRead More