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A. S. Byatt. Ragnarök; The End of the Gods. Melbourne: Text, 2011 [Book Review]

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posted on 2017-05-22, 04:53 authored by Geoff Berry
The Nordic myths of Asgard have been paid a fair degree of respect over recent years. They were a major inspiration behind Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, which received magisterial filmic treatment from Peter Jackson, and were granted a more explicit role in Kenneth Branagh’s recent visual feast Thor. A. S. Byatt’s new novel Ragnarök is a much more personal journey than these heroic epics, retelling the core mythic cycle of the Northern Europeans through the thoughts and experiences of a small girl during the Second World War air raids in and around London. Explicitly taking its cues from Dr W Wagner’s 1880 book Asgard and the Gods, Byatt’s reverie also clearly utilises autobiographical details in its telling of “the thin child” during wartime.

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Publication date

2011

Issue

21

Document type

Book Review

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    Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique

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