This title comes with an introduction by Craig Raine. Three short novels show Golding at his playful, ironic and mysterious best. In The Scorpion God we see the world of ancient Egypt at the time of the earliest pharaohs. Clonk Clonk is a graphic account of a crippled youth's triumph over his tormentors in a primitive matriarchal society. And Envoy Extraordinary is a tale of Imperial Rome where the emperor loves his illegitimate grandson more than his own arrogant, loutish heir. "The writing is brilliant, so fluent and stylish that the stories read themselves like a dream. "(Daily Telegraph). "As ambitious and as engrossing as the best of Golding. "(Financial Times).
