Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997)
Norfolk, Lawrence
Tagged: Author.
(1963- ) UK writer whose first novel, Lempriere's Dictionary (1991; cut 1992 US), an elaborate Fantasy of History set in the early nineteenth century, depicts vast Automata and sinister immortals (see Immortality) under a phantasmagoric London, murders that involve the re-enactment of classical myth, and a conspiracy that ties together the Siege of La Rochelle, the British East India Company and the origins of the French Revolution. The US edition is cut to a point which renders much of this unclear. Norfolk's second novel, The Pope's Rhinoceros (1996), is a Magic-Realism historical novel about a sixteenth-century Quest by two dim men-at-arms for the eponymous beast and their own self-respect, a quest which briefly involves some use of African myth and magic. [RK]
Lawrence Norfolk
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