The Ebony Tower

1974

Private Collection

Boston: Little, Brown

‘The Ebony Tower’ is a modern-day medieval romance. The story’s knight is David Williams, a young English painter and art critic who journeys to the old woods of Brittany to interview an older painter Henry Breasley. The epigraph connects Fowles’ story to the Breton lai by quoting lines from Yvain, a twelfth-century romance by Chrétien de Troyes. David’s dangerous quest takes him through strange and magical places and involves ritual tests and a dark tower.