Maeve Gilmore

A gothic odyssey beyond the walls of Gormenghast, where the shadows of the past collide with a world that does not remember them. Titus Awakes continues the story of Titus Groan, the 77th Earl of Gormenghast, as he ventures beyond the crumbling walls of his ancestral castle into a surreal and shifting world. Originally conceived by Mervyn Peake as the fourth volume in the Gormenghast series, the novel was left unfinished due to Peake's illness. Decades later, Peake's widow, Maeve Gilmore, completed the narrative in a lyrical and haunting manuscript discovered by the family and published in 2010. As Titus wanders through landscapes both real and imagined, encountering echoes of his past and visions of the future, Titus Awakes becomes a meditation on identity, freedom, and the enduring power of imagination. A dreamlike journey through memory, exile, and the search for self, Titus Awakes is an imaginative coda to a literary masterpiece. It is a poignant farewell to one of literature's most enigmatic protagonists-and a tribute to the creative legacy of the Peake family. "A treasure salvaged from the ruins...a strikingly imaginative coda to Peake's masterwork." -New Statesman

In Titus Awakes the 77th Earl of Groan leaves the crumbling castle of Gormenghast and finds the larger world even stranger than his birthplace. Using notes and the fragments he left behind, his wife, the painter and writer Maeve Gilmore, has created a richly imagined sequel that fans of The Gormenghast Trilogy will delight in.

These profound and moving accounts of life with Mervyn Peake provide poignant and revealing insights into the art, personality and friendships of the author of Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone.