Three to See the King

by Magnus Mills

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A novel rich in comic menace from the author of The Restraint of Beasts In a setting Samuel Beckett might have found homey lives a man in a house made of tin. He is content. The tin house is well constructed and located miles from the tin houses of his nearest neighbors. Though he seems to have escaped society, however, society finds him. One day, a woman arrives and moves in. Soon a neighbor comes to visit, and then another. Soon, moving figures silhouette the horizon. People dismantling their tin houses and setting off to find a master builder with a revolutionary message. The gravitational pull cannot be resisted. Nor can this novel. Part mystery, part parable, Three to See the King stalks the reader's imagination and grows inexorably and irresistibly in the telling.

Release date: December 7, 2001

Publisher: Picador

Print pages: 176

Sample

1
I live in a house built entirely from tin, with four tin walls, a roof of tin, a chimney and door. Entirely from tin.
My house has no windows because there's nothing to see. Oh, there are shutters that can be used to let the light in when required, but they remain closed against the weather for most of the time. It stands in a wild place, my house, high up on the plain. At night it creaks and groans as the wind batters it for hour after hour, in search of a gap to get inside. Even the door has to be bolted top and bottom to stop it from being blown open. I used to worry in case one day I might lose the roof, but so far that hasn't happened and now I'm certain the structure is quite sound. The man who built it made sure of that. I found the house empty a few years ago, and adopted it for my own use. At first sight I knew it had everything I could need: somewhere to eat and drink and sleep without disturbance, protected from the elements by a layer of corrugated metal and nothing more. A very modest dwelling I must say, but it looked clean and tidy so I moved in. For a long while I was quite content here, and remained convinced I would find no better place to be. Then one day a woman arrived at my door and said, `So this is where you've been hiding.'
THREE TO SEE THE KING. Copyright c 2001 by Magnus Mills. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.