The Foot of Clive
John Berger
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From the 1972 Booker Prize-winning author comes an examination of masculinity, social covenants and murder that develops into a masterclass in humanity, with an introduction by Benjamin Myers
Introduced by Benjamin Myers
In the centre of a 1960s hospital ward sits a curtained-off bed, guarded by a policeman. In it lies a murderer, hidden from view and likely to die before he can be hanged for his crime. In the closed, regimented society of the ward, his invisible presence fractures and rebuilds the way the other patients see the world. In the face of someone who has shattered all social covenants, life can no longer continue according to the rules.
Upturning conventions from morality to masculinity to class to prejudice, The Foot of Clive is a masterclass on humanity from the Booker Prize-winning author of G.
“Berger produced some of the most extraordinary narrative prose by any British post-war writer, of astonishing diversity of form and subject matter. Pick up almost any text and you will find risk and surprise, and sentence after sentence energized by intellectual curiosity and an intimate and intense gaze on the world”
times Literary Supplement
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“Berger’s early novel puts on display all his painterly skill for description, his flair for metaphor and his powerful social conscience, through the stories and conversations of an ordinary hospital ward. If you admire Berger’s later books it’s a gem that will deepen your understanding of his work”
Gavin Francis
”Praise for John Berger: John Berger seems to me peerless”
Susan Sontag
“John Berger has made the world a better place to live in. I do not say this lightly”
Arundhati Roy
“[He] reminds us of what most contemporary writing would have us forget, which is that great writers are distinguished, ultimately, by the quality of their humanity”
Geoff Dyer
John Berger
John Berger was born in London in 1926. His seminal Ways of Seeing was one of the most influential books on art in the 20th century. His many books, innovative in form and far-reaching in their historical and political insight, include To the Wedding, King, and the Booker Prize-winning novel, G. He lived and worked in a small village in the French Alps, the setting for his trilogy Into Their Labours (Pig Earth, Once in Europa and Lilac and Flag). In 2001, his collection of essays The Shape of a Pocket was published, and his Understanding a Photograph, edited by Geoff Dyer, was published in 2013. He died, aged 90, in January 2017.
