3.5
The Noise of Time
ByPublisher Description
From the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending comes an extraordinary fictional portrait of the relentlessly fascinating Russian musician and composer Dmitri Shostakovich and a stunning meditation on the meaning of art and its place in society. • “Brilliant…. As elegantly constructed as a concerto.” —NPR
1936: Dmitri Shostakovich, just thirty years old, reckons with the first of three conversations with power that will irrevocably shape his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has suddenly denounced the young composer’s latest opera. Certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, shot dead on the spot), Shostakovich reflects on his predicament, his personal history, his parents, his daughter—all of those hanging in the balance of his fate. And though a stroke of luck prevents him from becoming yet another casualty of the Great Terror, he will twice more be swept up by the forces of despotism: coerced into praising the Soviet state at a cultural conference in New York in 1948, and finally bullied into joining the Party in 1960. All the while, he is compelled to constantly weigh the specter of power against the integrity of his music.
1936: Dmitri Shostakovich, just thirty years old, reckons with the first of three conversations with power that will irrevocably shape his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has suddenly denounced the young composer’s latest opera. Certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, shot dead on the spot), Shostakovich reflects on his predicament, his personal history, his parents, his daughter—all of those hanging in the balance of his fate. And though a stroke of luck prevents him from becoming yet another casualty of the Great Terror, he will twice more be swept up by the forces of despotism: coerced into praising the Soviet state at a cultural conference in New York in 1948, and finally bullied into joining the Party in 1960. All the while, he is compelled to constantly weigh the specter of power against the integrity of his music.
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3.5
mjgriffin74656
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Adam Bone
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roror
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“Dmitri Shostakovich emerges from the periphery of history through Barnes' depiction of Soviet Russia.
I have read 1984, I know how people assume life continues beneath social, political, and personal oppression. I'm not sure if it will ever be fully grasped. My parents and grandparents lived in Soviet Bulgaria, and from their anecdotes, I sense that no literature will fully envelop the reality of life beneath the yoke.
However, I do appreciate Barnes' literature, having read The Sense Of An Ending, I enjoy how he combines humour & history. This book was an interesting theoretical comprehension of Shostakovich's life. I remain wary of an author who neither experienced the times, nor knew his subject, but I am still impressed by the book Barnes managed to craft.
Those 'who imagined that they knew how Power operated and wanted you to fight it as they believed they would do in your position. In other words, they wanted your blood. They wanted martyrs to prove the regime's wickedness.'
This book gave a comprehensive overview of the extent of psychological disruption generated by communism whilst also addressing why some chose to live, how for most this was worse than death as the 'terror' never stopped. Meanwhile, Barnes also addresses the tragedy of this life, as Shostakovich begins killing himself, though gradually, with drink, he descends further into a life he neither wants nor attempts to preserve.
Stalin's rule, and Lenin before him, wrecked generations of humans. Life was teased out of the population slowly, devastatingly. I am certain that Barnes held no illusion that a 179 page novel would be capable of extrapolating each detail. However, it does delve into the broken life of one broken man.”
Arijit Saha
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About Julian Barnes
JULIAN BARNES is the author of twenty previous books including, most recently, Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art. He has received the Man Booker Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the David Cohen Prize for Literature, and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in France, the Prix Médicis and the Prix Femina; in Austria, the State Prize for European Literature. In 2004 he was named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He lives in London.
www.julianbarnes.com
www.julianbarnes.com
Other books by Julian Barnes
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