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Written by Carlyle in the 1830's, this is a slightly odd novel that sort of straddles several genres. The cntral metaphor is clothes: the old ones tattered and needing to be torn off and replaced with new ones (a startlingly radical thing to say at a time of national disturbance and civil strife) and the need for people to trust tailors, learn to distinguish what clothes are important and what not (metaphors for civil society reorganizing itself at a time of strife) and behind it all the children's story of the emperor's new clothes - which only the outsider(the child, naif) could bring himself to identify properly - worthless - while custom and fear kept others in thrall. It also anticpates many ideas about language and structure and narrative that were to come in the 20th century with the likes of Joyce and Woolfe. It gets five stars for being an important book, exceedingly clever and many, many years ahead of its time, but it gets three stars for being a book that's not actually very easy to read, and isn't particularly satisfying.
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