The Utopian

The Utopian consists of two intertwined storylines unfolding in two radically different settings. First the story of Mesmer who in 2411 sets out on his Journey a rite of passage which is to last a year and a day in a gloriously pansexual matriarchal and feminist utopia told in the third person by a gentle and guileless narrator. The second storyline is set in Britain in 1979 and concerns Dr. Reed a patriarchal and self-obsessed psychoanalyst and his analysand a young man called Mesmer Partridge told in the first person by Reed in the voice of a spoilt sarcastic hostile curmudgeon. The two narratives entertain a complex twisting relationship to one another moving in all kinds of configuration in which they intermittently appear to parallel oppose double and subvert one another. Michael Westlakes novel first published in 1989 is thematically rich weaving theories of politics psychoanalysis and feminism together in stylish and dazzlingly imaginative prose. Contains a new introduction from Toril Moi and an afterword from Andrew Collier.Mesmerizing in its brilliance and suggestion The Utopian is a text we do not really know how to read. It confirms that Westlake is the most interesting novelist writing in England today. Antony Easthope Textual Practice