The Blue Gate of Babylon

By Paul Pickering

Chatto & Windus, 1989, [First Edition], ISBN 0701134135, hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing to edges and corners, no inscriptions, dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf war with a little rubbing, bumping, creasing and chipping to edges and corners (see photographs)

“Toby Jubb never intended to meet the love of his life on the night train to Berlin.  Just twenty-one, with a suitcase full of Buddy Holly records and a head stuffed with the Classics, he becomes enmeshed in a wintry world of espionage, Le Carre country with a surreal twist. It isn’t only that he finds himself the proprietor of a high-class brothel which, against advice, he tries to run with love and affection; or at the mercy of a hyperactive polar bear in Berlin Zoo; or sliding further and further into a haze of drugs and decadence.  Worst of all, his very sanity seems to be in peril.
Why, years after, do the chariots of the ancient Persian King Darius still pursue Toby round the Oxfordshire countryside?  Is Toby the Pretender they seek?  Is the prophet Daniel really an alcoholic, and what is the fatal secret of The Blue Gate of Babylon? And will Toby ever see his beloved again?”