Grendel

8vo. 1st edition. A touch of fading to edges of boards, with mild bumping to spine ends. P.o. blindstamp, inked date, and 4' glue burn to f.f.e.p. Light mottling to topstain. Dustjacket is bright and unfaded, with a few small spots of faint soiling and a few faint pen impressions. VG/NF... Like Milton in Paradise Lost, John Gardner re-imagines a familiar story through the sympathetic eyes of the antagonist. In Grendel, the ‘hero’ Beowulf plays only a minor part in the work, his name never uttered - only inferred. Flush with existentialist musings from the so-called monster, the experience of Grendel mirrors our own human existence: “I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly—as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back.” This is a first edition.