Husband of Delilah

Összefoglaló

Among all the great figures in the Old Testament, none is more enigmatic than Samson. His appeal is tremendous, his story dramatic - but what was his true character, his real significance?

In a robust and engrossing novel, Eric Linklater depicts him as a great folk hero - at once lusty ruffian, shrewd peasant and primitive mystic - whose legendary feats of strength, ribald humour and fanatical nationalism maintained a threatened faith and the flame of life in a people oppressed by a foreign power. The Samson of this book is brilliantly realised, and so is the Delilah: a great beauty, a great courtesan, whose love for the moody giant is true and intense, if fatally flawed, so that after her act of betrayal it reasserts itself in a final display of strength.

These two dominate a narrative of great vigour and variety, but it swarms with other characters just as vivid and convincing. The machinations of the Governors of the Philistine League at Gaza, the activities and ethics of the Frontier Police Force, the recurrent episodes of terror and violence - these have the immediacy of current events; and the Mediterranean world of 1100 B.C. is superbly evoked. Indeed, the power and the realism, the insight and the ingenuity, with which Eric Linklater has rounded out and elaborated on a familiar tale make Husband of Delilah a notable addition to those distinguished novels written in our own time and the fascinating past.