Ian Thornton – The Great and Calamitous Tale of Johan Thoms (страница 1)
This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Copyright © Ian Thornton 2013
Cover design © HarperCollins
Ian Thornton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
FIRST EDITION
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007551491
Ebook Edition © NOV 2013 ISBN: 9780007551507
Version: 2015-09-08
To Heather, Laszlo and Clementine
Contents
Copyright
Prologue:
A Refracted Tale of Two Wordy Old Gentlemen in a Blue Prism
Part One
1 Around the Time When Adolf Was a Glint in His First Cousin’s Eye
2 Pawn to Queen Four
3 Serendipity’s Day Off
4 The Butterflies Flutter By
Part Two
1 Fools Rush In
2 A Vision of Love (Wearing Boxing Gloves)
3 Drago Thoms: Pythagoras, Madness, and an Indian Summer in Bed
4 The
5 We Are the Music Makers. We Are the Dreamers of Dreams.
6 A Sweet Deity of Debauchery
7 A Day (or So) in the Country
8 Just a Lucky Man Who Made the Grade
9 The Accusative Case
10 The Black Hand
11 The Day Abu Hasan Broke Wind
12 A Microcosm of the Apocalypse
13 A Farewell of Scarlet Wax and Gardenia
Part Three
1 And the Ass Saw the Angel
2 It Only Hurts When I Laugh (Part I)
3 The Die Is Cast (aka
4 The Unlikely Bedfellow
5
6 The March of Don Quixote
7 In No-Man’s-Land
8 “A Shadow Can Never Claim the Beauty of the Image”
9 The Birth of Blanche in a Dangerous Ladbroke Grove Pub
10 Cicero’s Fine Oceanarium of Spewed Wonders (1920–1932)
11 Suffragettes, Mermaids, and Hooligans (1932)
12 Let’s Rusticate Again
13 Jackboots, Cleopatra, and the Bearded Lady (1932–1936)
14 The Girl in the Tatty Blue Dress
15 She Had a Most Immoral Eye (1937–1940)
16 Archibald’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
17 Then There Were Three Again
18 Music, Brigadiers, and Marigold (1940)
19 It Only Hurts When I Laugh (Part II)
20 “Gawd Bless Ya, Gav’nah!”
21 A Giant in the Promised Land
22 Pepper’s Ghost, Fluffers, and a Brief Encounter