Arthur And George - Rilegato

Barnes, Julian

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 030726310X ISBN 13: 9780307263100

Casa editrice: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2006

Riassunto

Set against the backdrop of the British Empire, an intriguing novel by the author of Flaubert's Parrot chronicles the lives of two boys--George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur, growing up in Edinburgh--one who is forgotten by history, and one who becomes the creator of the world's most famous detective, as they pursue their separate destinies until they meet in a remarkable alliance. 100,000 first printing.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"Precise, elegant, enchanting." --Elle

"Utterly absorbing, beautifully crafted . . . Arthur & George, rich and immensely readable, perfectly balances [its] radically different characters in a stream of flawless, driving sentences. The book is also sustained by Barnes's affectionate understanding of England's halting commitment both to art and to justice. This is an "English" novel in the most engaging sense of the word, and a great one." --Vince Passaro, O Magazine

"A beautiful, modulated work; highly recommended." --Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal, starred review

"In this combination psychological novel, detective story and literary thriller, Barnes elegantly dissects early 20th-century English society as he spins this true-life story with subtle and restrained irony . . . Shortlisted for the Booker, this novel about love, guilt, identity and honor is a triumph of storytelling, taking the form Barnes perfected in Flaubert's Parrot and stretching it yet again." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Enthralling . . . Deeply satisfying . . . With a mystery at the heart of the narrative, every detail is a potential, welcome clue." --Kirkus, starred review

"His most engrossing novel ever." --Jay McInerney, New York Observer

Acclaim from the United Kingdom

"Sprightly and acute." --Robert Winder, New Statesman

"Powerfully moving, beautifully wrought and accomplished." --Glasgow Herald

"From the first paragraphs we know ourselves to be in the hands of a major novelist and are borne forward by a compelling narrative, beautifully controlled, which combines the satisfactions of biography, social history and the excitement of a real-life detective story. This novel is Barnes at his best." --PD James, The Times

"Arthur & George acquires a hypnotic force. The character study, the feel for the period and the dialogue are all beautifully done. And the way in which the police close in on Edalji is genuinely chilling . . . the mark of a true novelist." --Andrew Martin, Daily Express

"What Barnes has done is to imagine, describe and dramatise this true story with fantastic control and subtlety . . . probably Barnes’s best yet." --David Sexton, Evening Standard

"[A] beguiling and enormously readable novel." --Andrew Taylor, The Independent

"One of the shrewdest English novelists, [Barnes] has an uncannily acute sense of what makes people, of all sorts, tick . . . What is remarkable, though, is the subtlety with which he goes about hijacking our fascination. In knowing what makes a great story, he has the instincts of a tabloid journalist, but in its delivery he displays the delicacy of a connoisseur who understands how to mete out his tale so quietly that when it bites, its mark is indelible . . . [Arthur and George] is a wholly absorbing portrait of late Victorian Britain and the attitudes it nurtured [and a] powerfully moving, beautifully wrought and accomplished novel." --Rosemary, Goring, The Herald

"A beautiful and engrossing work which brings together some classic Barnesian themes (love, identity), introduces some new ones (spirituality, guilt and innocence), and hangs them all on a real-life miscarriage of justice from 100 years ago that was always going to be a gift for the first writer to spot its potential for re-imagining . . . We are in a late-19th century world of fob chains and propelling pencils, of order, duty, and propriety. But dark forces are at work, and the manner in which George becomes a victim of them is all the more shocking for the elegance and restraint of Barnes's narrative voice . . . It's like seeing Henry James turned loose on The Shawshank Redemption." --Simon O'Hagan, The Independent on Sunday

"Excellent . . . Both meticulously researched and vividly imagined, both gripping and thoughtful . . . You will turn the pages with mounting and almost intolerable tension." --Caroline Moore, The Sunday Telegraph

"One of the year's finest novels . . . This is the kind of book Arthur Conan Doyle could never have written (far deeper psychological insight, far more sophisticated use of irony and awareness of the limits of fiction), yet it has all of the master's narrative panache . . . I can't think of a novel I've read in the last couple of years where the characters walk off the page as unstoppably as they do in Barnes's portrait of Doyle and Edalji . . . You want political, social, legal context? You want Holmesian detail? You want to understand how spiritualism started up in an increasingly rational age? You want all that woven into the plot as subtly as the late Victorian language also is? It's all here . . . Barnes is showing us just what fiction can do and up to what point we can believe in it . . . but in subtly shading in the differences between the verbs 'believe,' 'think,' and 'know,'; in doing all that with superb characterization, riveting dialogue and all the while giving us a totally credible context, Julian Barnes makes an outstanding case for what the novel can do." --David Robinson, The Scotsman

"Delightful . . . A thoroughly engrossing novel . . . that gradually enfolds the reader in a rich sense of period and place." --Andrew Crumey, Scotland on Sunday

"Richly accomplished . . . Barnes's suave, elegant prose--alive here with precision, irony, and humaneness--has never been used better than in this extraordinary true-life tale, which is as terrifically told as any by its hero Conan Doyle himself." --Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times

"With characteristically engaging intelligence, [Barnes] has taken the bones of a long-dead history and imbued them with vivid and memorable life." --Tim Adams, The Observer

L'autore:

Born in Leicester, England, in 1946, Julian Barnes is the author of two books of stories, two collections of essays, a translation of Alphonse Daudet’s In the Land of Pain, and nine previous novels. In France, he is the only writer to have won both the Prix Médicis and the Prix Fémina, and in 2004 he became a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In England his honors include the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He has also received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He lives in London.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Data di pubblicazione: 2006
• ISBN 10: 030726310X
• ISBN 13: 9780307263100
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 384