num_pages: 416
description: Alice Walker describes her new novel as “a romance of the last 500,000 years.” Spanning continents as well as centuries, it moves from the Americas, Europe, and Africa to nameless primal worlds, where women, men, and animals consort in surprising ways.At the center of the story are two marriages in crisis and a third that has long since shaken down. A guerrilla history professor and a teacher of women’s studies turned masseuse try to draw closer while remaining free. A rock star and his Latin American refugee wife are parted by an unlikely “other woman.” And a gentle artist and a silverhaired goddess—in the latest cycle of her countless lives—have been companions for so many years they are virtually interchangeable. As they talk about themselves and reconnect with missing pieces of the past, they uncover disquieting truths about relations between the sexes, the races, and the species during our tenure on the planet. And in the end, they deeply affect one another.Among the numerous engaging characters who appear in the story are Miss Celie and Miss Shug of The Color Purple, to which this mesmerizing novel is related in vision and spirit.
language: English
title: The Temple of My Familiar
titlecomplete: The Temple of My Familiar
genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Literature, Feminism, Classics, Novels, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Race, African American
ratings_count: 14289
series: The Color Purple Collection
publisher: San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich