Rogue Male

Geoffrey Household (1900–1988) was born in Bristol, England, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, after which he traveled widely in Europe and took jobs in a range of fields, including banking in Romania and banana importing in France and Spain. Drawn to America by the Romanian-American woman who was to become the first of his two wives, Household worked there on a children's encyclopedia and wrote radio plays for children before resuming his extensive travels as a salesman for a printer's ink company. He had also begun to publish stories in The Atlantic, and by 1935 was able to devote himself to writing full-time. His first book, The Terror of Villadonga (aka The Spanish Cave), written for children, came out in 1936 and was quickly followed by two novels for adults, The Third Hour and Rogue Male, which was a runaway success. Household served as a security officer in the British military during World War II and was stationed in Greece, Central Europe, and the Middle East. After the war, he returned to England and continued his career as a writer. His works include eight collections of short stories, four books for children, an autobiography, Against the Wind, and twenty-two novels, including Dance of the Dwarfs and Watcher in the Shadows. »

Victoria Nelson is a writer of fiction, criticism, and memoir. Her most recent books are The Secret Life of Puppets, a study of the supernatural grotesque in Western culture that won the Modern Language Association's Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies in 2001, and Wild California, a collection of stories. She teaches in Goddard College's MFA creative writing program. »

By Geoffrey Household
Introduction by Victoria Nelson

1930-something: a professional hunter is passing through an unnamed Central European country that is in the thrall of a vicious dictator. The hunter wonders whether he can penetrate undetected into the dictator's private compound. He does. He has the potential target in his sites and is wondering whether to pull the trigger when security catches up with him. Imprisoned, tortured, doomed to a painful death, the hunter makes an extraordinary and harrowing escape, fleeing through enemy territory to the safety of his native England. But that safety is delusive: his pursuers will not be diverted from their revenge by national borders; the British government cannot protect him without seeming to endorse his deed. The hunter must flee society, and he goes literally underground, like a fox to its earth. The hunter has become the hunted. Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male is a classic thriller and a triumph of suspense. Described by Household as a "bastard offspring of Stevenson and Conrad," the book is no less remarkable as an exploration of the lure of violence, the psychology of survivalism, and the call of the wild.

Read the introduction (PDF)

Reviews

The quintessential cat-and-mouse thriller. The plot is simple and unbearably suspenseful...Household boils down his narrative to its rawest elements, and the effect is gut-wrenching.
— Playboy

A story that grows wilder and woollier with every passing sentence...Short, sweet, and compulsively readable, we dare you to try and put it down.
— #1 on the list of "The 15 Best Thrillers Ever, Men's Journal

Rogue Male must forever remain a classic.
— John Gardner

A classic of adventure suspense.
— Los Angeles Times

Household...helped to develop the suspense story into an art form.
— The New York Times

Simply the best escape and pursuit story yet written, with lip-chewing tension right to the end.
— The Times (London)

Format: Paperback
Retail Price: $14.00
Price: $10.50 (25% off)

Nov 6, 2007
208 pages
ISBN: 1590172434
9781590172438
Literature in English
NYRB Classics

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Rogue Male

By Geoffrey Household Introduction by Victoria Nelson

Reviews

By Geoffrey Household
Introduction by Victoria Nelson