The Glass Mountain

"A man in his daughter's bed is a link out of the human chain," broods the King, a father who has irrevocably crossed the age-old boundary between parent and child. Brilliantly imagined and deftly executed, this provocative literary fable of lust and obsession is the tale of two sets of brothers, one of each pair blessed with beauty and grace and the other physically cursed; two mothers, one an icy queen of a frozen kingdom and the other obsessed with her thousands of birds; two riddles spun by a mysterious Persian; and Amalasuntha, the Princess whose father has placed her on top of a glass mountain to protect her from the lust of men, including his own. A taut and feverish tale of Oedipal tension and transformation that reverberates with the power of myth and folklore, The Glass Mountain is an astounding allegory for our time.