Fifth Business
Categories: Literature & Fiction
Fifth Business is a 1970 novel by the Canadian writer Robertson Davies, the first book of his Deptford Trilogy, followed by The Manticore and World of Wonders, and one of the best-known works of Canadian literature. Retired schoolmaster Dunstan Ramsay looks back on his life, which was shaped when, as a boy in the Ontario village of Deptford, he dodged a snowball thrown by his friend Percy Boyd Staunton that struck a pregnant woman, Mrs. Dempster. Ramsay's guilt draws him into saints, myth, magic and the role of 'fifth business.'
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- Margaret Atwood: “Listed among her favourite books in The Pleasure of Reading (1992), reprinted by The Telegraph.”