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The Noise of Time

The Noise of Time

by JulianBarnes (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2016

    $3.39
Synopsis

"BARNES' MASTERPIECE." (OBSERVER). In May 1937 a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now. And few who are taken to the Big House ever return. So begins Julian Barnes' first novel since his Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending. A story about the collision of Art and Power, about human compromise, human cowardice and human courage, it is the work of a true master.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 192
 Edition: 1
 Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Published: 28 Jan 2016
ISBN 10: 1910702609
ISBN 13: 9781910702604
Book Overview: Art and Power collide in Julian Barnes's first novel since the Booker-winning The Sense of An Ending

Media Reviews
A great novel, Barnes's masterpiece... Exquisite, intimate detail. He has given us a novel that is powerfully affecting, a condensed masterpiece that traces the lifelong battle of one man's conscience, one man's art, with the insupportable exigencies of totalitarianism. -- Alex Preston Observer Barnes's sombre, brilliant new novel opens with a scene like something from a story by Chekhov... Gleaming with intelligence and literary flair, this elegantly composed fictional meditation offers a fresh gloss on a musical genius's collisions and collusions with power. -- Peter Kemp Sunday Times [Barnes is] a master of the narrative sidestep... Not just a novel about music, but something more like a musical novel... The story itself is structured in three parts that come together like a broken chord. It is a simple but brilliant device, and one that goes right to the heart of this novel. -- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst The Times A compelling novel about art and power, courage and cowardice, and the capriciousness of fate...Barnes brilliantly captures the composer's conflicted state of mind...This book is only 190 pages long, but it packs an extraordinary emotional punch. -- Sebastian Shakespeare Tatler The writing in the early pages is magnificent... The reader has the confidence of being in the hands of a master storyteller... Barnes has a good sense of what life was like in the Soviet Union. He captures well the black humor, irony and cynicism. -- Orlando Figes New York Review of Books Julian Barnes' novel deftly evokes the complexity of Shostakovich's relationship with Stalin and the power of his oeuvre... Thick with period detail... The book returns us to the music itself, that immense 20th-century oeuvre that contains everything but confirms nothing. -- Hedley Twidle Financial Times Gripping... An intimately illuminating montage of Shostakovich's life... Immediately engaging. -- James Lasdun Guardian A novel of deceptive slenderness... You expect nothing less from a writer soaked in Flaubert. -- Duncan White Daily Telegraph A series of elegant insights into the mind of a brilliant artist... Throughout, Barnes offers a surety of touch that few writers can match. Independent on Sunday [A] sad, self-lacerating and darkly funny hybrid of a novel. The Noise of Time is both a burrowing meditation on an artist's lifelong relationship with totalitarian power, fear and compromise, and a fascinating fictional biography of one of the 20th century's greatest composers... Barnes is a master. -- Tod Wodicka The National A profound meditation on power and the relationship of art and power... It presents a life, and refrains from judgment. It is a masterpiece of sympathetic understanding... I don't think [Barnes] has written a finer, more truthful or more profound book. -- Allan Massie The Scotsman The skilled novelist here brings alive not just the political turmoil that surrounded Shostakovich, but his love for his wives, his love for his children, a vivid counterpoint of artistic freedom and political oppression - the eloquent conjuring of one glass of vodka clinking against another. The Economist This is a slim novel about the big things: art, fear, Power...history's farcical, tragic repetitions. It is also quite excellent. -- Stephanie Cross Daily Mail Julian Barnes takes an Orwellian turn for his first novel since winning the 2011 Man Booker Prize. Irish Examiner The Noise of Time looks to enthral us with its tale of compromise, cowardice and courage in Stalinist Russia. World Travel Guide
Author Bio
Julian Barnes is the author of twelve novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. He has also written three books of short stories, Cross Channel, The Lemon Table and Pulse; four collections of essays; and two books of non-fiction, Nothing to be Frightened Of and the Sunday Times Number One bestseller Levels of Life. He lives in London.