Ilojen kaupunki

About this book

"Ilojen kaupunki" by Arnold Bennett is a novel written in the early 20th century. It centers on the dazzling launch of a colossal London amusement park, where visionary conductor-impresario Charles Carpentaria and his moneyed partner Josephus Ilam clash over art, business, and control. Behind the spectacle, media games, jealousy, and a creeping menace suggest that their triumph hides a crime and a secret that could ruin them.

The opening of the story introduces the City of Pleasure from a tethered balloon as Carpentaria and Ilam survey their creation, immediately exposing friction between the artist and the financier. A brazen reporter, Smithers, secretly joins them, cuts the tether, and is outwitted when Carpentaria coolly vents gas to force a safe descent. That afternoon Carpentaria, aflame with inspiration, dashes off a “Balloon Lullaby,” then that night conducts a triumphant open-air concert—interrupted by a bullet that grazes his ear. Afterward, Ilam’s domineering mother urges ruthless action, Juliette d’Avray hovers anxiously around Carpentaria, and, near midnight, Carpentaria spies Ilam hauling a black-shrouded burden to a construction dump and burying it; he digs it up to find the drunk he had earlier noticed, now dead, and hides the body, while Ilam returns home shaken.