Staff Pick
I enjoy Julian Barnes's prose immensely. He has a wonderful and poetic way of phrasing things, and I find myself rereading sentences over and over again just for the pleasure. This makes for very slow reading! Ordered by Stalin to denounce Igor Stravinsky while on a propaganda tour in the U.S., Dmitri Shostakovich is torn: Should he obey, or follow his conscience and refuse? Recommended By Sheila N., Powells.com
The Noise of Time dramatizes the moral dilemma of Dmitri Shostakovich, the Soviet Union's greatest composer (sorry, Prokofiev), as he is confronted by Stalin. Recommended By Jason C., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
One of the Best Books of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle
1936: Dmitri Shostakovich, just 30 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. An extraordinary portrait of a relentlessly fascinating man, The Noise of Time is a stunning meditation on the meaning of art and its place in society.
Review
“A great novel, Barnes’s masterpiece — the particular and intimate details of the life under consideration beget questions of universal significance; the operation of power upon art, the limits of courage and endurance, the sometimes intolerable demands of personal integrity and conscience. This novel, like [The Sense of an Ending], gives us the breath of a whole life within the pages of a slim book.” Alex Preston, The Guardian
Review
“Magnificent... Novels about artistic achievement rarely do justice to their subjects. The Noise of Time is that rarity. It is a novel of tremendous grace and power, giving voice to the complex and troubled man whose music outlasted the state that sought to silence him.” Anthony Marra, Publishers Weekly
Review
“[An] ambitious Orwellian allegory about the plight of artists in totalitarian societies — and a Kafkaesque parable about a fearful man’s efforts to wrestle with a surreal reality, even as he questions his complicity with the system.... Barnes’s book internalizes these debates, turning them into conversations within Shostakovich’s own head. On one hand, defending his need to survive and protect his family; on the other, cursing himself as a cowardly worm.” Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
About the Author
Julian Barnes is the author of more than 20 books, including Keeping an Eye Open, The Sense of an Ending, and The Noise of Time. 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 40 languages. He lives in London.