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Headlong

Headlong

by Michael Frayn (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2012

    $11.72

  • New

    Paperback 2012

    $11.03
Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Headlong begins when Martin Clay, a young would-be art historian, believes he has discovered a missing masterpiece. The owner of the painting is oblivious to its potential and asks Martin to help him sell it, leaving Martin with the chance of a lifetime: if he could only separate the painter from its owner, he would be able to perform a great public service, to make his professional reputation, perhaps even rather a lot of money as well. But is the painting really what Martin believes it to be? As Martin is drawn further into this moral and intellectual labyrinth, events start to spiral out of control . . . Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Whitbread Novel Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, Headlong is an ingeniously comic thriller that follows a young philosophy lectuerer's obsessive race through the art world in search of an elusive masterpiece. Michael Frayn's other novels include Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel award, and Skios, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

$11.72

Quantity

1 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 400
 Publisher: Faber and Faber
Published: 03 May 2012
ISBN 10: 0571283489
ISBN 13: 9780571283484
Book Overview: Headlong by Michael Frayn - shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel Award - is a comic thriller set in the world of fine art, where a young philosophy lecturer risks his wealth and his sanity in the pursuit of an elusive masterpiece.

Media Reviews
Rueful and amusing . . . Frayn is that rare writer who succeeds as both a novelist and a dramatist. -- Randy Cohen, The New York Times Book Review

Finely wrought and highly comical . . . a perfect introduction to a writer who likes to pull the rug out from under your feet while offering you the most seductive of smiles. --Michael Upchurch , Seattle Times

Exceedingly funny, both in event and in intellectual high jinx. --Katherine A.Powers, The Boston Sunday Globe

Part detective story, part art history lesson, part cautionary tale, and entirely funny. -- The New Yorker

Frayn isn't stingy, even here, with the laughs, gleefully pricking holes in the overconfidence of academic art criticism. But just below the sugar powder you bite into his tough-minded essay on how history and individual human folly combine and conspire to manufacture art's 'message.' --Judith Dunford, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Delightful...this novel, deadpan hilarious and wonderfully written, is as effective a work of historical reconstruction as it is a comedy. --David Walton, Philadelphia Inquirer

Headlong offers an enthralling and refreshingly grown-up take on the alarming speed with which our morals shift to accommodate our desires, and on the lofty and low ways in which the great art of the past continues to affect us. -- Elle
Author Bio
Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His novels include Towards the End of the Morning, The Trick of It and A Landing on the Sun. Headlong (1999) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and Spies (2002) won the Whitbread Best Novel Award. His most recent novel, Skios, was longlisted for the Booker Prize. His fifteen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen and, most recently, Afterlife. He is married to the writer Claire Tomalin.