Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #300325 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
'Justin Cartwright is one of our best novelists, but he still feels like a buried treasure.' Allison Pearson, Daily Telegraph Books of the Year 'Cartwright is a beautifully evocative writer; also one who makes you think.' Scotsman 'His characters and their regrets, resentments, hopes and fears are very real, and his talent for spotting a telling detail can be devastating' Independent on Sunday

The Scotsman
Cartwright is a beautifully evocative writer; also one who makes you think.

Independent on Sunday
His characters' regrets, resentments, hopes and fears are very
real... his talent for spotting a telling detail can be devastating

Customer Reviews

A portrait of heroic failure
This is one version of the story of the friendship between Isaiah Berlin and Adam von Trott, and a moving and credible journey it is. The novel brings to life not so much the academic life of the 1930s from which this friendship orginated, but the stresses in the German upper classes at that time.

This is also the story of their marginalisation. They had lost their power and influence , but never quite realised it. The Staufenburg plot, which forms the climax of this book, epitomised their heroic failure. This novel gets into the skin of the German aristocrat, and for that alone is well worth the read. The various sub-plots are well-constructed and carry the story forward with pace. This is a very good book.

Utterly compelling.
The Irish Times described this as a truly great novel, and I agree. It's quite a complex book about two friends from pre-war Oxford, one a Jewish philosopher, one a Prussian nobleman, whose friendship founders when the
German goes back to Nazi Germany. Later he is hanged for his part in the plot of l944. All this is investigated by a student of the philosopher,
Conrad Senior. His obsession with what happened and his belief that the film of the hangings, made by Hitler, causes his marriage to fall apart.
Cartwright maintains the two narratives with compelling skill so that
I found I could barely breathe at times, and I certainly couldn't put the book down. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful...

Read it now
How can anyone write a book this good? Justin Cartwright struggles to write an indifferent sentence, let alone a poor book, but this one must be his best yet.
Maybe Bloomsbury don't bother too much with promoting their authors - with J.K.Rowling in the stable why should they bother?- but the fact that Cartwright is still a minority taste suggests there is something profoundly wrong somewhere. The combination of deeply moving storyline, complex and minutely thought through personal relationships and philosophical dilemmas, all written in sublime prose, make this the novel of the year for me. Instantly, this book catapults into my all time top ten and, after a second reading, I suspect it will climb higher still. I couldn't recommend it more.