A 'lost' Shakespeare play unearthed by acclaimed novelist Arthur Phillips.
The doomed hero of The Tragedy of Arthur is Arthur Phillips, a young man struggling with a larger-than-life father, a con artist who works wonders of deception but is a very unreliable parent. Arthur is raised in an enchanted world of smoke and mirrors where the only certain fact is his father's and beloved sister's shared love for the works of William Shakespeare - a love so pervasive that Arthur becomes a writer in a misguided bid to win their approval and affection.
Years later, Arthur's father, imprisoned for decades and nearing the end of his life, shares with Arthur a treasure he's kept secret for half a century: a previously unknown play by Shakespeare, titled The Tragedy of Arthur. But Arthur and his sister also inherit their father's mission: to see the play published and acknowledged as the Bar's last great gift to humanity...
Unless it's their father's last great con.
By turns hilarious and haunting, this virtuosic novel - which includes Shakespeare's lost King Arthur play in its five-act entirety - captures the very essence of romantic and familial love and betrayal. The Tragedy of Arthur explores the tension between storytelling and truth-telling, the thirst for originality in all our lives, and the act of literary mythmaking, both now and four centuries ago, as the two Arthurs - Arthur the novelist and Arthur the ancient king - play out their individual but strangely intertwined fates.
