The Carp Castle — MacDonald Harris

MacDonald Harris's only hitherto unpublished novel is set in the 1920's against a backdrop of airships, mysticism, erotic love and a Europe that is picking itself up after WW1. The League of Nations is a giant airship constructed by the same German factory that made the Zeppelin, and has been acquired by Moira, the mystic and clairvoyant leader of a semi-religious cult. The captain is Georg von Plautus, a Prussian WW1 Zeppelin commander who harbours a terrible secret from a bombing raid over London in 1916. Moira and her followers have embarked on an extraordinary voyage in this airship to a place that she calls Giaconda. This breath-taking novel explores the lives of the characters on board, taking the reader through a heady mix of sexual entanglements, metaphysics, and Blavatsky and Swedenborg-influenced s?ances. Towards the end of the novel it is apparent that all of Moira's devotees have something in common in their backgrounds.