The Green Child

The only novel by the famous anarchist, poet and art critic, Herbert Read. First published in 1935, it is a strange, powerful and original work: a sustained piece of political and philosophical fantasy. It tells the story of Dr Olivero, the president of a small South American country, who fakes his own assassination and returns to the English village of his youth. There he rescues a young child, a speechless creature with semi-transparent flesh, from her sadistic husband, whereupon she plunges into the millstream with him and takes him to her strange, subterranean world. A masterpiece which blends fantasy and reality.