Why did I love this book?
In Bliss and Blunder, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table return to England as a group of entitled, insecure techbros.
It might sound unlikely, but there’s true, literary magic at work as Gosling weaves England’s best-loved legends into the fabric of our present moment. Strange, fearless, and utterly convincing, there’s fun to be had in imagining (Sir Ga)Wayne drinking in the Green Knight or rummaging through Guinevere's Instagram account – but there’s anger, too.
Beneath the mythmaking, the story of Arthur is a story of power – the way it oozes and where it pools, who it celebrates, and who it destroys. We’re still as bewitched by the myths as we ever were – and the story hasn’t changed at all.
1 author picked Bliss & Blunder as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
'Exquisitely written and structurally bold ... a deeply impressive novel' Eva Dolan, author of This Is How It Ends
Selected for TLS Summer Books 2023
Arthur and Gwen married young. Twenty years on, Gwen's got it all: wealth, beauty, a famous husband who's the founder of Britain's most successful tech company, stables full of horses, millions of followers on Instagram, an unstable lover, a wayward son, a hoard of secrets, an aching heart, and a cyberstalking blackmailer who calls himself The Invisible Knight.
As the Wiltshire town of Abury prepares to celebrate the fortieth birthday of its favourite son, Morgan,…