Lavengro: The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest

George Borrow

Lu par Peter Dann

(5 stars; 4 reviews)

This unusual narrative by eccentric self-taught English linguist, traveller and one-time bible salesman George Borrow combines elements of autobiography, fantasy and anti-Catholic polemic. We follow Borrow around the countryside of England, Scotland and Ireland — and, for a period, through the streets of London — as he grows from a young boy to a young man in the first decades of the nineteenth century, attracted to studying various languages, hoping but failing to make his mark as a writer and translator, and then later adopting the life of an itinerant tinker, all the while struggling with intermittent bouts of existential despair and terror. The two figures Borrow denotes as "scholar" and "priest" in his title figure only slightly in the tale, while even Mr Petulengro, a gypsy Borrow befriends, appears only intermittently. According to Borrow, the term "Lavengro" signifies "word master" in the language of the gypsies. Noted Australian author (and, incidentally, self-taught student of Hungarian) Gerald Murnane has described Borrow as his favourite prose stylist. (Summary by Peter Dann) (21 hr 48 min)