1981

222mm x 140mm

Hard cover

First publication

Published by New English Library

191pp

ISBN 0 450 048772

One of Michael Moorcock's best books, and the first of our titles that 'Got Away' (also a single by Moorcock's band The Deep Fix, released on Flicknife Records in 1982). We commissioned this, and lost it to bankruptcy in 1981.

"What Michael Moorcock's aged roué Rickhardt von Bek recreates in the lurid account he's compulsively scribbling out against time, pain, the weight of his pen and the chidings of his faithful manservant is a youthful infatuation in fin de siècle Mirenburg with under-age Alexandra. Bek's finicky touch for detailed topography matches his energetic particularising of his many rococo sexual bouts—in threes, in groups, homo, hetero and bi, with whips, or drugs, or hat-pins, or whatever else Rosenstrasse Brothel can supply.

The brothel is, Bek fancies, like a nation—hermetic, microcosmic, rampantly selfish. History in Mirenburg comes sexualised, so do European politics: 'Sexuality is the key to personality'. It's a decadent notion that suits old pornopolitans. Is Alexandra, Bek wonders, a mere invention, like the city that's known to no real atlas? Probably. But then Bek can return to woman or city 'whenever I wish', and the more fantasising the encounter, it would appear, the better. Which will make The Brothel in Rosenstrasse mightily pleasing to readers with a relish for Moorcock's customarily extravagant courses."

VALENTINE CUNNINGHAM

More Moorcock in Savoy:

Introductions:

The Golden Strangers (Henry Treece)

The Dark Island (Henry Treece)

The Great Captains (Henry Treece)

Red Queen, White Queen (Henry Treece)

Interviews:

Who Writes Science Fiction? (Charles Platt)

Death Is No Obstacle (Colin Greenland)

Articles:

Cities Of The Red Night: A Review

An English Exile In Hollywood

Both in Savoy Dreams