num_pages: 0
description: Razor King is David Britton's seventh novel. His first Lord Horror published in 1989 was the last book to be banned in Britain under the Obscene Publications Act. In a defence led by Geoffrey Robertson QC the book was cleared of obscenity in July 1992.The new novel continues Britton's cycle of Absurdist picaresque narratives a series replete with scatological routines and outlandish tableaux. Razor King draws shockingly on the Jewish Holocaust following the transgressive speculative-fiction lineage of JG Ballard and William S Burroughs while embracing the fin de sicle psychedelia of Alfred Jarry and Harry Clarke.In Razor King two unconnected worlds and genres collide: the Wild West/Westerns and outer space/planetary adventure. Key influences are the fantastical works of two of Adolf Hitler's favourite novelists: Karl May a German author whose Western tales include characters such as Old Shatterhand and Winnetou the Warrior; and Edgar Rice Burroughs whose Mars trilogy (A Princess of Mars The Gods of Mars The Warlord of Mars) prefigures many of the popular fictional stylessword and sorcery heroic fantasy science fictionof later decades. Britton brings to the surface the psychotic undercurrents that often fuel these genres to create a phantasmagoria grounded in real historical events.Continuing a trend begun with La Squab in 2012 Razor King is illustrated throughout by Kris Guidio.
language: English
title: Razor King
publisher: Savoy Books