By Petar Penda

Preface to Gaither Stewart’s newest novel “The Hamlet: A Tale of Life, Dreams, and Epiphanies“. Now available worldwide through Amazon.

In his seminal book of socio-political essays entitled Babylon Falling (Punto Press, 2017), Gaither Stewart, to a certain extent, explains his poetics. In two of his notable essays, “Compromise and Commitment” and in “Transformation” that opens the book, he sees the creative individual’s chief goals to be to change and transform the world, to be committed, and to “reject social conformity and political correctness”. He further explicates the necessity of writers’ engagement by stating that “moral conflicts of the day have a political background and that nearly every aspect of our lives is related to politics. An understanding of politics is fundamental in order to understand what the writer must oppose and what he can defend.” Not only has Stewart such a viewpoint in his essays, but also shows it in his novels through the themes he deals with and by the action of his characters. This emphasizes his point of view that the private life of an individual is inseparable from the political, which is hugely visible in his novel The Hamlet.

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