The Noise of Time

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Art and Power collide in Julian Barnes's first novel since the Booker-winning The Sense of An Ending A Daily Telegraph / Financial Times / Guardian / Sunday Times / The Times / New Statesman / Observer Book of the Year ** The Sunday Times Number One bestseller ** A Daily Telegraph / Financial Times / Guardian / Sunday Times / The Times / New Statesman / Observer Book of the Year 'BARNES'S 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's 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.

Reviews

A great novel, Barness masterpiece Exquisite, intimate detail. He has given us a novel that is powerfully affecting, a condensed masterpiece that traces the lifelong battle of one mans conscience, one mans art, with the insupportable exigencies of totalitarianism. -- Alex Preston * Observer *
Barness 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 geniuss 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 fateBarnes brilliantly captures the composers conflicted state of mindThis 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 *

Author Bio

Julian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and The Man in the Red Coat, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Duff Cooper Prize. In 2017 he was awarded the Legion d'honneur.