Philip Robinson - Masque of a Savage Mandarin

[Johnlprobert]

Philip Robinson - Masque of a Savage Mandarin

MacDonald 1969 (Hardback)

Panther 1974 (Paperback)


The hardcover is the copy I'm reading and the jacket is very austere in keeping with a lot of the SF novels of the late 60s (just a black and white printed circuit above a pair of eyes).

However the Panther paperback cover illo is brilliantly and appropriately loony. I can't do the photobucket thing but you can view it here:

www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/r/philip-bedford-robinson/masque-of-savage-mandarin.htm


I'll post some of the plot once I can work out what it's about but so far Nicholas Coad, nicknamed 'the Mandarin' at school has undergone a Conversion (whatever that is), and lives in ordinary old Finlandia flats, next door to a man called Rogers who is his Subject. Apart from reading, looking after cats, playing with his realistic rubber brain and fiddling with his Machine he goes out to (probably) engage in a variety of acts of sexual congress which he records in Latin in his notebook.

When Rogers tries to bite the head off Miss Ito, a Japanese prostitute, Coad decides to try and psychoanalyze him.

I'm only about 70 pages in but this is completely mad.

[Johnlprobert]

Two more chapters, one that's almost a stream of consciousness bitter invective about life in the City, and the next part of Mr Coad psychoanalysing Rogers with physics questions that involve three prostitutes, two male clients and a sausage being thrown from one party to another.

Halfway through now & this makes less sense as I go on.

[Johnlprobert]

So it turns out Mr Coad believes his purpose in life is to fry Mr Rogers' brain cell by cell using the machine he's built and installed in his flat. He's also cut the head off an insane preacher in a churchyard and fried the brain of an inspector from the electricity board who's come to find out quite why Coad is using so much power.

50 pages to go!

[andydecker]

Philip Robinson - Masque of a Savage Mandarin (Macdonald, 1979, 199 pages, this edition Panther/Granada, 1974))

Cover found on the net. Thanks to the original scanner.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Jun 17, 2023 12:21:07 GMT andydecker said:

Philip Robinson - Masque of a Savage Mandarin (Macdonald, 1979, 199 pages, this edition Panther/Granada, 1974))

Cover found on the net. Thanks to the original scanner.

I remember this very memorable cover and title. The book cannot possibly live up to them. Or can it?