A debut novel by the 1987 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, about an artist on a journey of self-discovery—navigating a family secret, racism, and the conflict between marriage and career. “Skillfully evokes the mood of a decade when social change seemed not only possible but imminent.” —Washington Post Book World When a woman returns to her Midwestern hometown as an artist-in-residence to teach puppetry to schoolchildren, her homecoming also means grappling with artistic ambition, memories of rejected love, and shocking truths about her family.

Trinity student Charles Stanihurst, the son of a Dublin merchant and a Roscommon chambermaid, flees his native city after assaulting an English officer and heads for the West of Ireland, where he encounters a culture virtually unknown within the pale. Beyond the Shannon much of the old Gaelic way of life is still intact, though under growing threat from the political power and land greed of the 'foreigners'. Charles is forced to confront divisions between his Anglo-Irish and Gaelic loyalties, while seeking his spiritual father, Bishop William Bedell, who is translating the Old Testament into Irish. Set in post-Flight of the Earls, pre-Cromwellian Ireland of 1641, this novel tells the gripping story of a struggle between two opposing cultures that set the scene for the rebellion sealing the fate of Gaelic Ireland.

Magic is what lures people like anthropology student Theodora to the exotic, dangerous world of Ivory, where everything is for sale and magic really works. But cut off from her companions, Theodora finds what began as a pleasure trip becoming a terrifying odyssey into her own gift for magic.

Several years ago, Christian Huxley's father, George, obsessively documented the strange phenomena emanating from Ryhope Wood at the edge of their property. He watched the ancient heroes emerge, shouting both incomprehensible warnings and unmistakable invitations. Recklessly, George followed them inot the mysterious sylvan shadows that changed him forever. Christian himself was not untouched by these living dreams. A childhood encounter with a phantom from another time draws him to the Wood as an adult. Deep in Ryhope, Christian uncovers the lie that permeates his worst nightmares. And like his father, he will be consumed with the mythagoes of Ryhope, especially a young Celtic warrior called Guiwenneth. She is the key to the mystery of the universe, an ancient heroine caught in a timeless tale of bravery and sacrifice. Now, together with a band of crusaders from a world long gone, Christian and Guiwenneth become part of the unfolding stories both remembered and forgotten. They meet sorcerers in battle and giants who can travel miles in one step. And they discover the meaning of the two gates, Ivory and Horn - one the lie, the other the truth.

"The author explores this tradition in depth and defines it with a breadth of vision, a dynamic vigor and freedom rarely paralleled today....His method, flexible, generous, humane in the best sense of the word, eschews pedantry, dogma, useless theorizing and scholastic argumentation."--The New York Times Book Review. "I wish to make it clear that The Gates of Horn represents an outstanding critical accomplishment."--Saturday Review. In the Odyssey, Homer describes two gates of the imagination: one of ivory through which fictitious dreams pass, and the other of horn, through which nothing but the truth may pass. Realism is the type of literature that passes through the horn, and in this significant study of the genre Levin examines a major form of Realism--the French novel--and focuses on five of its masters--Stendahl, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Proust. Now available in paperback, Levin's study is a veritable reconstruction of the artistic and intellectual life of a nation.

Monumental epic poem tells the heroic story of Aeneas, a Trojan who escaped the burning ruins of Troy to found Lavinium, the parent city of Rome, in the west.