Ship of Fools.
“People can't hear anything except when it's nonsense. Then they hear every word. If you try to talk sense, they think you don't mean it, or don't know anything anyway, or it's not true, or it's against religion": First Edition of Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools; Signed by Her
Ship of Fools.
PORTER, Katherine Anne.
$850.00
Item Number: 142403
Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1962.
First edition of this classic bestseller from the Pulitzer Prize winner which dramatizes the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s in a sweeping story of a transatlantic cruise featuring a cast of unforgettable characters. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly signed by Katherine Porter on the half-title page. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Rob Howard. Photograph of Katherine Anne Porter by Arthur B. Long. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell case.
The story takes place in the summer of 1931, on board a cruise ship bound for Germany. Passengers include a Spanish noblewoman, a drunken German lawyer, an American divorcee, a pair of Mexican Catholic priests. This ship of fools is a crucible of intense experience, out of which everyone emerges forever changed. Rich in incident, passion, and treachery, the novel explores themes of nationalism, cultural and ethnic pride, and basic human frailty that are as relevant today as they were when the book was first published in 1962.
