![]() ![]() ![]() Irwin's shaping gift tends to be embodied in work whose violations of mimetic assumption make much of it describable in terms of Fantastika, a short example being "Waiting for the Zaddik" in Tales of the Wandering Jew (anth 1991) ed Brian Stableford. The clarity of Irwin's articulation of this story structure inspired the use of his title as a theme entry in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, where it links to various authors those also with entries in this encyclopedia include Lisa Goldstein, L Ron Hubbard, Charles Nodier, Jan Potocki, Herbert Rosendorfer, Gene Wolfe and others. ![]() Irwin's protagonist Balian falls into a nightmare which causes infinite suffering and cannot be recollected upon awakening each further descent embeds itself deeper into the overall structure but there is no end to the nightmare, though the Ape of God – who in The Arabian Nightmare iterates the final instalment of Balian's ordeal – may be telling us that Balian is now in Hell. ![]() (1946- ) UK academic and author whose work in Arabian studies, of importance in itself, underpins the world envisioned in his first and most famous novel, The Arabian Nightmare ( 19), which may be the definitive rendering of its central conceit: the dream narrative whose protagonist, upon seeming to awaken, only finds himself passing through a Portal into a deeper dream. ![]()
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