The Hearing Trumpet

by Leonora Carrington · 1976

The Hearing Trumpet follows 92‑year‑old Marian Leatherby, who receives a silver‑encrusted hearing trumpet only to discover her family plans to commit her to a bizarre old‑age home. The institution is a surreal landscape of cake‑shaped buildings, cult‑like self‑improvement rituals, a cross‑dressing abbess, and a quest for the Holy Grail that culminates in a man‑made apocalypse and a post‑apocalyptic utopia of cats, werewolves, bees and goats. Leonora Carrington’s novel blends absurdist humor, feminist critique of aging and institutional control, and vivid surrealist imagination, making it a celebrated classic of fantastical literature admired by artists such as Björk and Luis Buñuel.