ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins by examining two novels of 1988 and 1989 — The Carpathians by Janet Frame and Charades by Jannette Turner Hospital — before considering Jonestown by Wilson Harris. It traces the extent to which the influence of Nietzsche's philosophic formulations can be detected in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain with its vivid presentation of a realm whose instability provides the conditions necessary for metamorphosis. The book regards Spider Rose, the hybrid protagonist who metamorphoses into the simulcra of the mascot she has loved and yet had to kill and consume, as adopting an essentially nihilist stance. It identifies the concepts and language of alchemy as an important resource in the presentation of the metamorphosis of reality into the literary construct of history in Chaucer's The House of Fame.
