(1963), Colin Wilson’s third novel, is a fascinating
Bildungsroman, a novel of personal development and education, in which the first-person narrator and main protagonist, Hugh Greene, now aged about thirty-two, recounts his intellectual and existential progress from infancy to young manhood. His narrative moves between a vivid evocation of specific events and a more detached analysis of their meanings. The first part of the novel, called “The Outer Dark”, relates key incidents of his life between the ages of two and sixteen. Born in the early 1930s, Hugh is the first child of respectable middle-class parents in an unnamed provincial town (a sister, Anne, is born in 1942). His father is a solicitor in the local firm of Cheesman, Greene and Hake, and, in his…
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Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "The World of Violence". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 May 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23920, accessed 26 November 2024.]
