Having an amazing dream about a strikingly beautiful magical boat, young Arthur is unable to interest his family in hearing about it, when suddenly the boat appears on top of his head and grows larger and larger until Arthur sails away upon the waves. By the creator of the best-selling Penguin.

"Arthur's Whims" is the tale of "a modern saint," a love story born of a childhood dream of being "alone on a boat with a boy, a friend." Arthur and his beloved Bichon-a young man who, after drinking Arthur's tears, becomes pregnant with his child-drift through a stream of identities and circumstances: birdcatchers for a French taxidermist; sailors shipwrecked in an ice fortress; explorers of the Isles of Traitors, Babies, and Sadness; famous magicians in Oklahoma; religious and medical marvels. It is an anarchic, outrageous novel, in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe and Comte de Lautréamont, now available in English for the first time in translation by Daniel Lupo. This edition includes Hervé Guibert's essay "The Bear," in which he compares his books to rooms in a house, writing: "Arthur's Whims would be the library of the house, and the bedroom of a child who will never be." It is "a true adventure novel in the tradition of the genre, or what I believed to be its tradition, with great journeys, disasters, shipwrecks, cataclysms."

The Arthurian legend closes with a promise: On a distant day, when his country calls, the king will return. His lost realm will be regained, and his shattered dream of an ideal world will, at last, be realized. This collection of original essays explores the issue of return in the modern Arthurian legend. With an Introduction by noted scholar Raymond H. Thompson and 13 essays by authors from the fields of literature, art history, film history, and folklore, this collection reveals the flexibility of the legend. Just as the modern legend takes the form current to its generation, the myth of return generates a new legend with each telling. As these authors show, return can come in the form of a noble king or a Caribbean immigrant, with the mystery of an art theft or a dying boy's dream.

One day something snaps inside Arthur Gibson, a burnt out forty year old manager tired by his rat race office life, and within one hour he sells everything he owns, flies to the sea, buys a sailboat and drives to the horizon, planning on never coming back.Of course this noble attempt to set himself free goes terribly wrong as the corporate environment didn't exactly prepare Arthur well for an off the grid sailor's life. So however free and independent he now feels, soon his biggest problem is how to survive.His escape becomes an international media sensation thanks to Alice Garbo, an ambitious journalist who makes Arthur and herself famous to boost her career. Millions admire his courage to 'stick it to the man', millions call him a coward. Soon, Alice toys with Arthur's destiny as she pleases, moves him like a chess piece to make his story appealing to the audience. He becomes a wanted felon pursued by Interpol and so he finds himself almost dying on a boat he can't drive, being chased by police for something he didn't do and haunted by a media alter ego that has a life of its own. Arthur has bitten off more than he can chew.Arthur's Choice talks about taking a scary leap of faith when finding one's personal fulfillment without conforming to where society tells you a true happiness is. In today's fast paced, performance oriented first world, this book offers the answer to the question 'what if I just said enough?' The story is for adults struggling to find meaning or joy in mundane unfulfilling jobs, those tired by the contemporary speed of life.

Provides information on the actual life of King Arthur along with the development of the legends that surround his life.

One of the finest narrative poems of the Middle Ages translated in its entirety by a recognized authority on the poem. This volume represents an important chapter in the evolution of the Arthurian legend. It is marked as an epic poem by its celebration of battle and conquest and its unsentimental depiction of combat and death.