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A Novel
by William Demby
A gripping and genre-defying novel by a rediscovered great of twentieth-century Black American writing, about what it means to be a writer at the dawn of a new era.
First published in 1965, The Catacombs is a metafictional account set in early 1960s Rome, where the author had returned to study art history after serving on the Italian front during World War II.
African-American expatriate Bill Demby narrates his attempts to write a novel about his friend Doris, who is living in Rome and employed as one of Elizabeth Taylor's handmaidens in the filming of Cleopatra. Utterly dependent upon Doris for the development of his novel, he is both a participant in and observer of her life as she enters into an affair with an Italian count. Bill Demby's growing emotional and artistic involvement in the tumultuous affair of his character-friend leads him on an existential quest for the meaning of truth and fiction, both lived and created, in a world torn by the social upheaval of the early sixties.
Interrupted constantly by headlines from television and newspapers, slipping in and out of fiction and metafiction, The Catacombs is a time capsule from an era on the brink and a novel unlike any other.
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This information about The Catacombs was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
William Demby was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on December 25, 1922. His works include Beetlecreek (1950), The Catacombs (1965), Love Story Black (1978) and King Comus (2017). He died in 2013.
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