Riders in the Chariot

by Patrick White

Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1961, First edition
Hardcover, dustjacket

Condition: Very Good
Minor edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, previous owners’ inscription on front endpaper.  Dustjacket very good, clipped with a little rubbing, bumping, chipping and small tears (see photographs)

“It is concerned chiefly with four people and with the vision that is the centre of each of their lives but which they keep hidden from the world.  The first of them is a strange woman, whom all the neighbours think mad, living in a vast, crumbling house where a wall may crack away or a tree invade the room and hardly be noticed.  The second is a Jew who has escaped the gas chambers of Germany; the third ad simple, kind person, a laundress, married to a drunkard; the fourth an aboriginal with an obsessive gift for painting which is his only contact with the world.  They are, as people, entirely different: the one thing they share is a vision of the world of which the Chariot is the symbol.  Each of them, in some way, has been chosen.”