Maggot

In his prologue, John Fowles tells us that "A Maggot" began as a vision he had of five travellers riding with mysterious purpose through remote countryside. This image gives way to another - a hanging corpse with violets stuffed in its mouth - which leads us into a maze of beguiling paths and wrong turnings, disappearances and revelations, unaccountable motives and cryptic deeds, as this compelling mystery swerves towards a starling vision at its centre. "A remarkable and brilliant work of fiction...the imaginative power of the novel is astounding, the technical virtuosity and structural daring equally so" The Times "This altogether admirable novel serves, as all literature should, the forces of subversion. It is a worthy companion to The French Lieutenant's Woman, which does the same thing, but bolder in its experimentation and hence more notable as an artistic achievement" -- Anthony Burgess Observer "Compelling and passionate fiction... Fowles's darting imagination skims across the landscape of two and a half centuries" Times Literary Supplement "Brilliant and compelling...he deploys his usual seductive narrative gifts to great effect" Guardian