Ancient Evenings
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ancient Evenings | |
| Author | Norman Mailer |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Little, Brown & Company |
| Publication date | 1983 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback |
| Pages | 709 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0316544108 |
Ancient Evenings is a novel by Norman Mailer. It deals, with the lives of two protagonists, one young, one old, in a very alien ancient Egypt marked by journeys by the dead, reincarnation, and violent and hyper-sexual gods and mortals in a complex combination of historical fiction, allegory, poetic flight, confession and spiritual meditation.
The novel has had an extremely mixed criticial reception marked by a preponderance of negative reviews, some scathing [e.g., those by Benjamin DeMott, Joseph Epstein, some very favorable [e.g., those by Richard Poirier, Christopher Ricks].
Derided by many, it is included in the canonical listing of Harold Bloom in The Western Canon and books celebrated in Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 by Anthony Burgess.
