The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician is an exuberant late-Victorian historical fantasy cast as the memoir of an ancient Phoenician warrior who repeatedly falls into enchanted sleep and awakens at decisive moments in Britain's past. Moving from Roman Britain through medieval and early modern scenes, Arnold blends antiquarian spectacle, martial adventure, romance, and mock-archaic narration. The book belongs to the era of imperial romance associated with H. Rider Haggard, yet its time-spanning structure also anticipates later speculative fiction concerned with deep history and national myth. Edwin Lester Arnold, an English journalist and novelist, was the son of Sir Edwin Arnold, the poet and orientalist best known for The Light of Asia. His literary inheritance, professional immersion in popular print culture, and Victorian fascination with archaeology, empire, and legendary origins all inform Phra's unusual design. Arnold's imagination turns history into pageantry, but also into a meditation on continuity, conquest, and the making of English identity. This book is warmly recommended to readers of early fantasy, historical romance, and forgotten Victorian adventure fiction. Its extravagance, learned allusiveness, and vigorous narrative energy make it both entertaining and historically significant. This enriched edition has been carefully crafted to add value to your reading experience. - Hand-picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
Autorentext
Edwin Lester Linden Arnold (1857 1935) was an English author whose most famous novel "Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation" is considered an important contribution to 20th-century science fiction literature and is believed to inspire Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom to create his John Carter series. Despite exciting plots of his stories, Arnold created only six works of fiction. He also authored several non-fictionsbased on the time he spent living and travelling in India, Scandinavia, and Britain.
Zusammenfassung
Imagine you fall asleep today and wake up in three hundred years! That's the story of Phra, the Phoenician, who has a rare gift of death-like sleep which makes him almost immortal. A reader gets introduced to Phra, a traveling Phoenician warrior, as he saves a slave girl, falls in love with her, and decides to bring her back home to Britannia. From there starts his incredible life journey through different eras of British history, ending up in the Elizabethan age. Each of his long periods of sleep relates to an invasion. For the first time, it happens during Caesar's invasion of Britain. Next time he wakes up when Saxons are chasingRomans out, then the Norman invasion, and then the invasion of France, followed by the Elizabethan epoch. In each of his lives, Phra is doomed to find love and lose it, prove his calling of a warrior and protect his land. At the same time, he has a unique chance to observe how the times are changing. Following Phra's time travels, a reader understands that there are basic things in life that are never out of date, and love is one of them.