The Song Before it is Sung

by JustinCartwright (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $3.40

  On 20 July l944 Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped death when an assassin's bomb failed to kill him in his Eastern command, the Wolf's Lair. The conspirators were hunted down and hanged from meat-hooks, and their executions were filmed. Among them was Axel von Gottberg. Sixty years after his death, von Gottberg's close friend and now a legendary Oxford professor, Elya Mendel, leaves a legacy of papers and letters to a former student, Conrad Senior. Senior becomes obsessed with what they reveal, but as he becomes more and more involved with the past his own relationship with his wife Francine begins to fall apart. The friendship between Mendel and von Gottberg is fatally undermined by a romantic rivalry when two mysterious cousins, Rosamund and Elizabeth, enter their lives in a richly imagined pre-war Jerusalem. But it is finally destroyed when von Gottberg returns to Germany. Mendel, who is Jewish, believes him to be a Nazi, and alerts the Allies to his doubts about his friend, doubts which torment him after von Gottberg is garrotted. Conrad is desperate to find a film Hitler had made of these appalling executions, for reasons he himself cannot fully understand. The Song Before It Is Sung is a remarkable tapestry of passion, ideas, frailty, courage and humanity, spanning Oxford in the 1930s, pre-war Prussia and contemporary Britain. It is a profound novel that addresses the nature of friendship and what it means to be human, and it is the work of a master novelist.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.40

  On 20th July, l944, Adolf Hitler escaped death by a miracle in a failed bomb. He found the main conspirators, had them hung from meathooks and their executions filmed. Axel, Count von Gottberg, is one of those hanged by Hitler. Sixty years after his death, his old friend Elya Mendel leaves a legacy of papers and letters to former student Conrad Senior. And, with the legacy comes a mysterious duty. Drawn into a web of jealousy, betrayal, passion and terrible misunderstandings, Conrad's own life and marriage begin to suffer as a result of his obsession with the events of that momentous day in 1944. The Song Before It Is Sung recreates the events of one fateful day which could have changed the world and ended the war, bringing Von Gottberg and Mendel vividly and brilliantly to life. Cartwright weaves an extraordinary story of human frailty, degradation and nobility, spanning Oxford in the nineteen thirties, pre-war Prussia and contemporary Britain.