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Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
Original language
English

THE CAGE

Lloyd Jones

At the front of a little hotel in a country town, a flickering sign says, ‘All welcome'. The dining room and guest rooms are upstairs, the kitchen below. There is a broken swing under the willow in the garden.

Fleeing a catastrophe they cannot describe, two strangers stagger into town, scarecrows in rags. At the hotel, Uncle Warwick, Dawn and the Trustees nickname them Doctor and Mole, and offer them shelter. No one knows where they've come from, including the young man who takes it upon himself to make a note of everything they do.

The Cage is a fable about trust and fear, blindness and sight, what it means to bear witness, what it means to have nothing.

Lloyd Jones is the bestselling author of Mister Pip, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His other books include Hand Me Down World, The Book of Fame and A History of Silence.
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Published 2018-02-01 by Text Publishing

Comments

I was reminded of the eerie, desolate beauty of Jim Crace or the bald and claustrophobic lyricism of Emma Donoghue's Room, for this is fantastically, blandly effective prose, the tone pitch perfect, not a stultifying word wasted, not a dark idea out of place. In fact, by far the most impressive thing about this deeply disturbing fable is the vast and deadening landscape of language that seems to spring up around it. Jones has forged a piece of poetry of the most uncanny and macabre kind... Read more...

France: Actes Sud

A thinly disguised allegory of how easily ordinary, civilised people can lose their humanity, which reminded me of William Golding's Lord of the Flies.

NZ: Penguin Random House

Best known for his novel Mister Pip, New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones' latest offering is a compelling if unsettling read. The language is simple and reflective, as befits the teenage narrator. There are obvious parallels to the plight of refugees and how a horrendous situation can become almost banal and acceptable. It is a thought-provoking and affecting book for readers of literary fiction where the morally questionable appears very ordinary.