Arthur & George -- New Vintage Paperback
Vintage announces the U.K. release of Arthur & George in paperback (September 2006). Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Arthur & George is the story of two men who grow up worlds and miles apart in late 19th century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Catholic Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, George a Birmingham solicitor, is happy in hardworking obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events that made sensational headlines at the time as The Great Wyrley Outrages.
With a mixture of intense research and vivid imagination, Julian Barnes brings into sharp focus not just this long-forgotten case but the inner workings of the two men and the wider psychology of the age. Arthur & George is a novel in which the events of a hundred years ago constantly set off contemporary echoes. It is a novel about low crime and high spirituality; guilt and innocence; identity, nationality and race; and thwarted passion. Arthur & George explores what we think, what we believe, and what we know.
Available for purchase from Amazon.co.uk and numerous local independent booksellers.
posted by Ryan @ 7:16 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
My mother was very interested in Spiritualism, and I once went to an Estelle Roberts meeting with her. It was in a lerge hall (Conway? I can't remember. I was i8 at the times and the date was just before the outbreak of WW2) The hall was crowded, and I remember that the proceedings were very similar to the ones described in Arthur and George at the Albert Hall. But the one thing I remember clearly was that Red Cloud (?) stated categorically through her that there would be no war. This was taken up by the press, as there was much speculation at the time, and I think it did a great deal towards undermining both Estelle Roberts and the Spiritualist movement in general. I remember how before that there was great interest and belief and I attended several other smaller gatherings, but I have no recollection of this interest and activity continuing into or after the war.
Why this didn't get the Booker instead of Banfield I'll never know. A truly superb book.
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