Armadillo (novel)
Armadillo is the seventh novel by William Boyd , published in 1998 . The German translation by Chris Hirte was published in 1999.
Armadillo tells the story of Lorimer Black, a young insurance worker in London in the 1990s.
The novel consists of twenty chapters and a number of Black's diary entries inserted.
content
Lorimer Black works as a claims adjuster for an insurance company, who examines the case for possible fraud when an insured loss occurs and tries with great skill to convince the injured party that they are satisfied with less money than they are entitled to by insinuating fraud. His payment amounts to a share in the amount saved.
Black's real name is Milomre Blocj, which he changed to the less than perfect anagram "Lorimer Black". He comes from a Romanian gypsy family , whose members run a taxi company in Fulham and regularly pull money out of his pocket. He collects antique helmets, listens to African music, is currently setting up a little house on the east edge of London, has an affair with Stella Bull, the owner of a scaffolding company, and is participating in a research project on sleep disorders with a doctor friend of his at the Institute for Lucid Dreams . He calls his diary "The Book of Transfiguration".
When Black is commissioned to investigate irregularities in a fire during the construction of the Fedora Palace, a hotel high-rise, many things happen at the same time. He falls head over heels in love with the completely unknown young actress Flavia Malinverno, a paranoid rock star becomes friends with him, his father dies, he takes care of his neighbor's dog and his colleague Torquil Helvoir-Jaynes - whose unpronounceable name in the original English text leads to constant puns - entangles him in the intrigues of his love life, finally moves in with him and then works very successfully as a taxi driver for his family.
The high-rise fire, however, spreads widely: Black encounters a number of irregularities; the operators of a construction company responsible for the fire physically threaten Black and set his car on fire. Ultimately, the entire Fedora Palace case turns out to be a large-scale insurance fraud in which the insurance company itself played a central role - Black has exaggerated his insistent research and is sidelined with the assertion that if he remains silent, he will be able to resume his old job after a year. However, Black writes a "report of certain abuses related to the insurance of the Fedora Palace Hotel" and sends it to the media and the police. At the end of the novel, he travels to Vienna after Flavia into an uncertain future.
Themes and motifs
Armadillo is on the one hand a novel about the upheavals of the yuppietum of the 90s, the fixation on outward appearances, status, money and the associated dreams, hopes, disappointments and the constant plans, but also about the still intact English civil society with its conceit, the Private clubs and the corresponding class boundaries that money can only overcome to a limited extent, but not pure ambition and skills at all.
Armadillo is also a literary city portrait of London with the city as a network that requires an endless tailspin and drive through. Boyd revisited this theme in his later novel, Simple Thunderstorms .
As in some of his other novels, Boyd varies the theme of identity and difference: several characters in Armadillo have given themselves new names, some of the names are almost ineffable (Helvoir-Jayne, Blojc, Dymphna or Sheriffmuir) and thus evade clear identification .
The armor motif runs through the novel, for example in the protagonist's helmet collection, but also in the title, which refers to the Spanish and English names of the armadillo , whose armor covers almost the entire surface of the body.
filming
- 2002 Armadillo , Movie made for TV England / USA, (Director: Howard Davies , with Stephen Rea and James Frain )
expenditure
- English original edition: Armadillo ; Hamish Hamilton publisher, London 1998
- German language first edition: Armadillo , German by Chris Hirte; Hanser, Munich 1999. ISBN 3-446-19644-7
- Paperback: Armadillo , same translation; Berlin-Verlag, Berlin 2011. ISBN 3-833-30741-2