Product Description

The haunting new novel from Paul Bailey, whose work has been short-listed twice for the Booker Prize. At the age of seventy, Andrew Peters looks back across the years to remember life with his doting Uncle Rudolf, who rescued him from fascist Romania as a child. Vivid, often hilarious, stories of Rudolf's brilliant but blighted singing career are intertwined with the slow unfolding of secrets that have shadowed Andrew's otherwise happy life. Told in matchless prose, this deeply moving novel captures a vanished epoch with exquisite tact and restraint.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45207 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
One of the post-war English literary greats, Paul Bailey is esteemed for the piercing finesse of his writing. His new novel Uncle Rudolf exemplifies that trait: it packs a telling and surprising emotional punch, despite its apparent slightness. The narrator is a partly Jewish Romanian, Andrew Peters, looking back on his colourful life. The eponymous hero is the narrator's opera-singing uncle, who rescued the young Peters from proto-Nazi Eastern Europe, and brought him to England. As Peters regards his early years by the Danube we get to see a picture of old mittel Europe through the exile's nostalgic and rhapsodic eyes:

Why was I thinking of pickled vegetables--of cauliflower and carrots; of green and red peppers; of radishes and red cabbage? I hadn't eaten the dish in a lifetime... and then, with an involuntary cry of anguish, and clear blue sky, I saw my mother and me tickling my father, who is pretending to be asleep on the grass.

Poignant stuff, in itself. But Bailey/Andrews' intent isn't merely to paint a cameo portrait of Yiddish life, it's also to tell the story of how the stranger becomes the Englishman, and how intellectual and artistic values can be translated across borders.

As the scene shifts from Vienna to London to the opera houses of the world, what abides is the wit and life force of Uncle Rudolf and his bemused coterie of exiles: "He spoke in French, and very occasionally said something in his native Polish, but there was one English word, and one only, that he loved. It was "belly". He would pat his stomach and say "Mon belly", and then he'd laugh out loud. "Mon belly, Monsieur Petrescu. C'est enorme." This is a charming, exquisite, uplifting novel. --Sean Thomas

Review
'A finely-wrought meditation on language, art, melancholia, lyric tenors, loss. Paul Bailey's book contains exquisitely poignant moods of regret.' Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph 'A poised and elegant tale.' Amellia Hill, Observer 'Lyrical and touching.' Michael Arditti, The Times 'An exquisitely composed novel of doubleness, dubeity and prolonged protected silences.' Guardian 'This fine and thoughtful tale is given a bittersweet seductiveness by the elegant sophistication of Bailey's writing and the splendid flamboyance of his central character.' Lucy Hughes-Hallet, Guardian 'The underlying story is sad -- harrowing, indeed -- but there is spicy humour here too. Andrew himself is an appealing narrator: honest, troubled, perceptive. It is the clarity of his vision that gives the novel its crisp and satisfying accuracy, and makes it one of Paul Bailey's best books.' Independent 'This is a beautifully worked cultural fable, elliptically presented after the manner Bailey has made uniquely his own. But it's more than this; the teller of the tale and his subject love one another deeply, and their love transfigures the world they find themselves in.' Spectator 'An exceptionally tender and vivid account of a little boy's expulsion from his own country and language. Tremendous.' Beryl Bainbridge 'I read it in one sitting and think it echoing and beautiful; so graciously pitched, perfectly poised, balanced on its hair-breadth between grief and delight. It moved me terribly. I loved it.' Ali Smith 'Beautifully written, strange, moving and wryly funny. Haunting.' Shena Mackay 'The wars of twentieth century Europe produced countless individual family tragedies that could be as strange as they were harrowing. Bailey has woven the anguish and consolation experienced by his narrator into the fabric of history with humour as well as compassion.' Alan Brownjohn 'Whether describing the boy Andrew's heart-rending final parting from his father in Paris, the comic antics of Rudolf's adoring entourage, or the final denouement of an open-air political meeting in a newly liberated Romania, each scene is boldly and comprehensively realised. Bailey's authorial voice possesses a silky, seductive, wholly individual timbre, and is deployed with all the skill of the highly professional writer that he is.' Literary Review 'Uncle Rudolf is a tale of Bach, burnt toast and betrayal. The simple story carries a heavy burden of hidden pain. The period detail, sketched in lightly, is frequently amusing -- what man today would wear a cologne called Jicky? -- yet this masterly study of exile is more likely to leave the reader in tears.' Time Out Praise for Paul Bailey 'He has a rare feeling for language and an understanding of character which few can rival.' Selina Hastings, Daily Telegraph On KITTY AND VIRGIL: 'A book the depth and beauty of which it is hard to do justice in the language of criticism and dissection.' Alex Clark, TLS On OLD SOLDIERS: 'Old Soldiers has taken root in my head. It's a spare, intense, elliptical novel, beautifully and cunningly set in a London which is at once drawn from Dickens and bang up-to-date.' Jonathan Raban, Sunday Times On GABRIEL'S LAMENT: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 'A magnificent novel, moving, eccentric and unforgettable.' Daily Telegraph On PETER SMART'S CONFESSIONS: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 'Rich in characters, situations, jokes and comic repartee. It's a fiendishly clever and funny book.' Anthony Thwaite, Observer

Michael Arditti, Saturday Times
'Lyrical and touching. Bailey beautifully delineates Uncle Rudolf as a performer who is racked with guilt.'