The Eighth Wonder of the World
Advertisement
The Eighth Wonder of the World
In 1930, the visionary architect Amos Prince disappears from America, where his wife and two of his children died in a suspicious fire. Six years later, he turns up in Italy, where he promises to build a monument sized to match Mussolini’s ego. In The Eighth Wonder of the World, Leslie Epstein intends Prince to recall the poem-writing nutcase Ezra Pound, which explains both his florid anti-Semitism and his compulsive wordplay — the need to dub a rival ”Frank Lloyd Wrong.” At its best, the novel offers fine riffs on buildings and empire and empire-building and works as a rebuttal to Ayn Rand’s majestically silly Fountainhead. The rest of the time, it’s a stiff pageant where historical figures drift by like parade floats.
The Eighth Wonder of the World
type |
|
genre | |
author | |
publisher |
Comments