Paris in the Present Tense - Hardcover

Mark Helprin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0715652885 ISBN 13: 9780715652886

Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, 2018

Synopsis

By the bestselling author of Winter's Tale and A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin's powerful new novel is set in Paris caught between violent unrest and its well-known, inescapable glories. Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour - a maitre at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust - must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present. In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life - days bright with music, family, rowing on the Seine - Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and to find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist a third his age. Against the backdrop of an exquisite and knowing vision of Paris and the way it can uniquely shape a life, Helprin forges a denouement that is staggering in its humanity, elegance, and truth. In the exhilarating beauty of its prose and evocative storytelling, Helprin's Paris in the Present Tense is a soaring achievement; a deep, dizzying look at a life through the purifying lenses of art and memory.

About this title

Review:

'An intensely lyrical voice that both heightens and deepens every sentence, at times attaining a kind Joycean beauty . . . Part of this force comes from the images that fly off Helprin's sentences like glitter from a sparkler... His Paris does exist in the present tense, irresistibly, undeniably real and alive, as though summoned by its creator rather than imagined' --The New York Times Book Review

'Prose seems too mundane a term for Helprin's extravagant way with words and emotions' --Los Angeles Times

`A modern-day story of love, music, and death... a masterpiece filled with compassion and humanity. Perfect for the pure pleasure of reading' --Kirkus, starred review

About the Author:

MARK HELPRIN was born in 1947 and was raised in the British West Indies. He did his postgraduate work at Oxford University and served in the British Merchant Navy before becoming the acclaimed, bestselling author of Winter's Tale, In Sunlight and in Shadow, A Soldier of the Great War, Freddy and Fredericka, The Pacific, Ellis Island, Memoir from Antproof Case, and numerous other works. His novels have been translated into more than twenty languages and read around the world. Find our more at: www.markhelprin.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0715652885
• ISBN 13: 9780715652886
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400