The Tragedy of Arthur is an emotional and elaborately constructed tour de force from bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist Arthur Phillips, “one of the best writers in America” ( The Washington Post ). Its doomed hero is Arthur Phillips, a young man struggling with a larger-than-life father, a con artist who works wonders of deception but is a most unreliable parent. Arthur is raised in an enchanted world of smoke and mirrors where the only unshifting truth is his father’s and his beloved twin sister’s deep and abiding love for the works of William Shakespeare—a love so pervasive that Arthur becomes a writer in a misguided bid for their approval and affection. Years later, Arthur’s father, imprisoned for decades and nearing the end of his life, shares with Arthur a treasure he’s kept secret for half a century: a previously unknown play by Shakespeare, titled The Tragedy of Arthur . But Arthur and his sister also inherit their father’s mission: to see the play published and acknowledged as the Bard’s last great gift to humanity. . . . Unless it’s their father’s last great con. By turns hilarious and haunting, this virtuosic novel—which includes Shakespeare’s (?) lost King Arthur play in its five-act entirety—captures the very essence of romantic and familial love and betrayal. The Tragedy of Arthur explores the tension between storytelling and truth-telling, the thirst for originality in all our lives, and the act of literary mythmaking, both now and four centuries ago, as the two Arthurs—Arthur the novelist and Arthur the ancient king—play out their individual but strangely intertwined fates. A  New York Times  Notable Book • A  New Yorker  Reviewers’ Favorite of the Year • A Wall Street Journal Best Novel of the Year • A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year • A Chicago Tribune Favorite Book of the Year •  A  Library Journal  Top Ten Book of the Year • A  Kirkus Reviews  Best Book of the Year • One of Salon’s five best novels of the year The always-original Phillips has outdone himself in this clever literary romp. Successfully blending and bending genres, he positions himself as a character in a novel that skewers Shakespearean scholarship, the publishing industry, and his own life to rollicking effect. Poised on the brink of literary history, Random House is about to publish a recently discovered Shakespearean play that had languished for centuries until unearthed by Phillips� own father, also named Arthur Phillips. As literary executor of his father�s estate, the younger Arthur is invited to provide a �brief� introduction to this masterpiece, detailing the often questioned provenance of the play and his own eccentrically dysfunctional family in the process. Oh, by the way, the play, complete with scholarly notes, is also appended. Who wrote the play? Was it Arthur Phillips or William Shakespeare? How much truth does an author actually reveal in a fictional memoir? How low will a publishing company sink in pursuit of a literary coup? Does a play within a novel ever make sense? For the answers to these and other burning questions, you simply must read the book. High-Demand Backstory: Phillips, who has been on everyone�s radar since the publication of Prague (2007), continues to intrigue and amaze. --Margaret Flanagan A memoir and a Shakespearean play wrapped into a novel? Who could pull this off but the prolific Phillips? Highly recommended for all who enjoy inspired, original, entertaining writing. -- Library Journal (Starred Review and Editor's Pick) The text of Arthur demonstrates that there are few limits to Mr Phillips's imagination. ~ Robert McCrum, The Guardian (U.K.) A tour de force--clever, rueful, full of insight, and, as always, stuffed with amazing prose. Arthur Phillips can legitimately stake a claim to being one of the best and most daring and original of novelists. --Dan Chaon A funny, sad, absurd, moving, and very, very smart book. I don't know if it's fiction or non-fiction or both or neither, and ultimately it's irrelevant. --James Frey Arthur Phillips is the internationally bestselling author of The Song Is You, which was a New York Times Notable Book and named one of the best novels of the year by The Washington Post; Angelica; The Egyptologist; and Prague , which was also a New York Times Notable Book and the winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. He lives in New York with his wife and two sons.