Fifth Business

By Robertson Davies

Book #1 in the The Deptford Trilogy series

A war hero's past intertwines with myth, revealing hidden influences and mysterious events.

4.1/5 Goodreads · 20,926 ratings

252 pages· 103,749 words· Est. 9.5 hour read

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Bookroo's summary

Ramsay, a decorated World War I hero, finds himself entangled in a web of memory, myth, and reality. His seemingly innocent actions, like a snowball throw or card trick, ripple through time, affecting those around him in unexpected ways. As he recounts his life, the line between the ordinary and the extraordinary blurs, challenging his rationality. What hidden forces shape his destiny, and how do they alter the lives of others? Discover the enigmatic journey of a man whose past holds more than meets the eye, where the marvelous is just another facet of reality.

From the publisher

The first book in Robertson Davies’s acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly Link Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man’s land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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