This title comes with an introduction by Craig Raine. Three short novels
show Golding at his playful, ironic and mysterious best. In The Scorpion
God we see the world of ancient Egypt at the time of the earliest
pharaohs. Clonk Clonk is a graphic account of a crippled youth's triumph
over his tormentors in a primitive matriarchal society. And Envoy
Extraordinary is a tale of Imperial Rome where the emperor loves his
illegitimate grandson more than his own arrogant, loutish heir.