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Overview
Accident, Nicholas Mosley's brilliantly conceived and efficiently structured novel about Oxford University and environs, is a prose poem about marriage and infidelity, as well as the relationship between writing and existence, imagination and action. It is a study of the games academics play both with their students and with themselves, on campus and off, in bed or on the cricket fields or baronial halls of the landed gentry. By probing the mind of one philosopher-don, the Stephen who has second thoughts about what constitutes an "accident," Mosley gives us an unforgettable view of life at the top or tip of the academic heights, in addition to a moving story of love and betrayal."A most brilliant and singular piece of work." (Harold Pinter)
"[A] fascinating and original novel. . . . Technically, Accident is remarkable." (Times Literary Supplement)
"Nicholas Mosley's major theme is 'the public face and the private helplessness.' He writes particularly well the prose of shock, of the dead, small hours: and he also writes, as few can, of the pain and purpose of marriage." (London Sunday Times)
"Original in texture, universal in import. . . . Accident evokes a sense of what it is to be its central character: a Prufrock man adrift in the 1960s." (New York Times Book Review 11-10-85)
"[A] first-rate experimental novelist. . . . In an age of so much successful 'light fiction,' he's a special taste, the kind of writer whose books stick in your mind for weeks after you've finished them." (Tom Clark, San Francisco Chronicle 6-22-86)
Synopsis
Accident, Nicholas Mosley's brilliantly conceived and efficiently structured novel about Oxford University and environs, is a prose poem about marriage and infidelity, as well as the relationship between writing and existence, imagination and action. It is a study of the games academics play both with their students and with themselves, on campus and off, in bed or on the cricket fields or baronial halls of the landed gentry. By probing the mind of one philosopher-don, the Stephen who has second thoughts about what constitutes an "accident," Mosley gives us an unforgettable view of life at the top or tip of the academic heights, in addition to a moving story of love and betrayal.
"A most brilliant and singular piece of work." (Harold Pinter)
"[A] fascinating and original novel. . . . Technically, Accident is remarkable." (Times Literary Supplement)
"Nicholas Mosley's major theme is 'the public face and the private helplessness.' He writes particularly well the prose of shock, of the dead, small hours: and he also writes, as few can, of the pain and purpose of marriage." (London Sunday Times)
"Original in texture, universal in import. . . . Accident evokes a sense of what it is to be its central character: a Prufrock man adrift in the 1960s." (New York Times Book Review 11-10-85)
"[A] first-rate experimental novelist. . . . In an age of so much successful 'light fiction,' he's a special taste, the kind of writer whose books stick in your mind for weeks after you've finished them." (Tom Clark, San Francisco Chronicle 6-22-86)