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Lewis Carroll – THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS : Collins Classics
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THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS : Collins Classics

Lewis Carroll
BRAND NEW, PAPERBACK

RM13.00

A Work Of Surrealistic Fantasy, Filled With Strange Characters, Bizarre Events, And Nonsensical Wordplay

ISBN 9780007350933
Book Condition BRAND NEW
Format PAPERBACK
Publisher HarperCollins Publisher (William Collins)
Publication Date 06 September, 2016
Pages 192
Weight 0.24 kg
Dimension 18 × 11 × 1 cm
Availability: 1 in stock

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1 in stock

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Description

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.
 
“Through the Looking-Glass” is a novel by Lewis Carroll, published in 1871 as a sequel to his earlier work, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. The story follows Alice, a young girl who steps through a mirror into a fantastical world on the other side.
 
In this world, she encounters a chessboard landscape where she becomes a pawn and must journey to the other side of the board to become a queen. Along the way, she meets a variety of characters, including Humpty Dumpty, the Jabberwocky, and the White Queen, and she engages in a series of strange adventures and conversations.
 
‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.’
 
In Carroll’s sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice once again finds herself in a bizarre and nonsensical place when she passes through a mirror and enters a looking-glass world where nothing is quite as it seems. From her guest appearance as a pawn in a chess match to her meeting with Humpty Dumpty, Through the Looking Glass follows Alice on her curious adventure and shows Carroll’s great skill at creating an imaginary world full of the fantastical and extraordinary.


“Through the Looking-Glass” is known for its use of logic puzzles, word games, and surreal imagery. The novel is often seen as a commentary on the nature of reality, perception, and language, and it has been analyzed by scholars and readers alike for its many layers of meaning and interpretation.
 
“Through the Looking-Glass” has twelve chapters and is told in a third person, omniscient voice. Alice’s inner thoughts are often described, and some of the more curious creatures she meets speak in rhyming verse. In the novel’s first chapter, Alice sleepily watches a kitten play with a ball of yarn. To entertain herself, she picks the kitten up and tells her about a world where everything is upside down. She calls this the “Looking-Glass House.”
 
A bit bored, Alice climbs up a fireplace to closely examine a hanging mirror. Suddenly, Alice is transported through the looking-glass. She peers out to see the fireplace where she was just standing. Alice looks around her new room.
 
She attempts to read a poem called “Jabberwocky,” but finds in illegible. She figures out that when she places it against the mirror, she can decipher the text, but the content of the poem is still, for the most part, nonsensical. Alice also observes that the chess pieces, while the same size, are now animate. Alice, attracted by a beautiful garden outside, goes for a walk. Mysteriously, everytime she follows the path a certain distance, she is transported back to the house’s front door.
 
She talks to herself, wondering how she can possibly get to the beautiful garden still at a distance. A flower replies; it notes that she is a walking flower. Other flowers soon start speaking to Alice, too. To her disappointment, their advice is useless. In fact, they often insult her intelligence and appearance.
 
They mention the Red Queen, and Alice figures that she might help her get to the garden. She bumps into the Red Queen, who is now life-sized and has the ability to run at breakneck speeds. They meet and talk, but conversation stalls when the Red Queen insists on constantly reprimanding Alice’s manners.
 
Eventually, the Red Queen explains that this world is laid out like a board game. Alice is a human pawn. If she can reach the eighth row of the chessboard, she will become her very own Queen with special powers to move wherever she wants. Alice agrees. Alice finds herself on a train with a goat, a beetle, and a man wearing white paper for clothes. They ridicule Alice, and she ignores them for the most part.
 
Alice disembarks the train near a forest. She has traveled to the forth row of the chessboard; this physical move mirrors the rule in chess that pawns can move by two spaces only once. She meets a giant gnat who pleasantly teaches her about the different kinds of insects she can find in this very strange world.
 
She wanders through a forest and suddenly forgets her name, as well as all her other memories. She meets a deer who has also forgotten his memories. They journey through this forgetting forest for awhile until they pass its outer limits, and their memories come flooding back. In fright, the deer bolts away from Alice.
 
She stumbles onto two large, egg-shaped men named Tweedledum and Tweedledee. When she asks for directions, they just recite poems. They claim that Alice isn’t real; she only a part of the Red King’s dream. The three argue until a giant crow flies by and Tweedledum and Tweedledee run away in fright. Alice runs into the White Queen, who explains that time works backwards in this world. The White Queen helps Alice cross a river to the sixth row.
 
Approximately halfway through the book, Alice meets Humpty Dumpty. He speaks a lot of nonsense and is celebrating his “unbirthday,” i.e. one of the 364 days of the year that are not his birthday. A unicorn and a lion—“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men”—come to do battle for the fate of Humpty Dumpty. During this battle, Alice crosses a shallow river and makes her way to the seventh row.
 
She is nearly captured by a Red Knight, but fortunately, the White Knight comes to her defense and escorts her to the castle. Alice says goodbye to the Knight. When she steps over to the eighth row, Alice suddenly becomes “QUEEN ALICE.” Out of nowhere, a giant crown is thrust on her head. The White and Red Queenboth appear. They speak in coded nonsense and word games that frustrate Alice. They inform her that they’re having a party to celebrate her promotion to Queen.
 
The party ends up being more nonsense, and Alice becomes so frustrated that she grabs the Red Queen and shakes her to stop it all. Little does she know, this is the equivalent of capturing the Red Queen, and the action puts the Red King (who has been sleeping the entire time) in checkmate.
 
Having won the game, Alice wakes up. She’s suddenly in her armchair and holding a black kitten. She sees the white kitten walking along the floor. She imagines that the White and Red queen were the white and red cat, respectively. Alice wonders if she really is just the figment of some higher power’s imagination. Carroll concludes with a poem that suggests waking life is actually a dream.
 
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About the Author :
 
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll (1832–1898), was an English writer, mathematician, logician, deacon and photographer. He is most famous for his timeless classics, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. His work falls within the genre of ‘literary nonsense’, and he is renowned for his use of word play and imagination. Carroll’s work has been enjoyed by many generations across the globe.
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