The content and style of the novel by the English writer F. B. Robinson “The Masque of a Savage Mandarin” (Ph. B. Robinson “Masque of a savage mandarin”, 1969) can be described in a nutshell, which the author did by providing it with a subtitle: "horror farce". Black comedy, an ever-popular genre in English-speaking culture, appears here as an ironic Grand Guignol, an example of literary pop art from the times of Swinging London and Leicester's films, and the phantasmagoric plot, a variation on the theme of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is a hapless loser rebelling Candide, mysteriously transformed into a mad genius, brings out the "higher self" in his unsuspecting neighbor, the model average citizen, gradually destroying his brain - providing the occasion for a series of parodies and allusions to everything that was heard in those years.< /p>

Despite some outdatedness of the techniques and irrelevance of the allusions contained in the parodic, farcical and eerie surreal scenes that make up the novel, this amusing antithesis of Fowles’s meaningfully serious “Collector” is perfectly readable even now, and the nuances that inform it special flavor, you may not even notice: it is perfectly perceived as a sample of prose, not devoid of healthy sadism, in the spirit (but not in the style) of popular contemporary authors, or the fantasies of Gene Wolfe and Blaylock. The book is very funny, written quite elegantly, the author never tests his patience reader and really keeps the mocking promise of a complete absence of naturalistic scenes and violence in his novel.