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Heroes and Villains
  • Published: 2 May 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141968377
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 176

Heroes and Villains



One of two strange and compelling Angela Carter novels, new to Penguin Modern Classics

Sharp-eyed Marianne lives in a white tower made of steel and concrete with her father and the other Professors. Outside, where the land is thickly wooded and wild beasts roam, live the Barbarians, who raid and pillage in order to survive. Marianne is strictly forbidden to leave her civilized world but, fascinated by these savage outsiders, decides to escape. There, beyond the wire fences, she will discover a decaying paradise, encounter the tattooed Barbarian boy Jewel and go beyond the darkest limits of her imagination.

Playful, sensuous, violent and gripping, Heroes and Villains is an ambiguous and deliriously rich blend of post-apocalyptic fiction, gothic fantasy, literary allusion and twisted romance.

  • Published: 2 May 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141968377
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 176

About the author

Angela Carter

Angela Carter was born in 1940. She lived in Japan, the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965. Her next book, The Magic Toyshop, won the John Llewllyn Rhys Prize and the next, Several Perceptions, the Somerset Maugham Award. She died in February 1992.

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Praise for Heroes and Villains

'An unashamed fantasist, a fabulist of daemonic energy'

The Times

'Angela Carter is a genius'

Victoria Glendinning