The Brothers Carburi - Hardcover

Harbouri, Petrie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747553424 ISBN 13: 9780747553427

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2001

Synopsis

'When we were children we had the foolish idea that if we were ever parted each of us would only have to pick up a shell and hold it to his ear and listen to know that the other was alive and well somewhere in the world. My brother maintained that the distant murmur when you hold a shell to your ear is nothing less than the sound of your own soul, for he refused to believe that what you hear is the sea. Which was why Marco and I thought we might hear each other's souls.' Three brothers, born in the eighteenth century on the Greek island of Cephalonia were to spread their wings and soar to impressive heights in their three professions. The middle son Marco's chemistry laboratory in Italy was famed throughout Europe. A whole generation of physicians would recall Giambattista, the tall, thin medical paragon of legendary concentration, who became physician in Italian and French Royal households. Then came the self-confessed black sheep Marino, who in youth strangled a lover in Venice and fled to St Petersburg, where he became a celebrated engineer, executing an unthinkable feat for the Queen of all Russias to celebrate the anniversary of her coronation. He devised the machinery to transport a huge rock weighing three million pounds by water from Finland to St Petersburg to form the plinth of a statue to Peter the Great. With great artistry, Petric Harbouri has brought the brothers Carburi to life together with all their triumphs, tragedies and scandals, and with all the excitement of the new scientific promise of the age.

About this title

Review:

"Attractive, subtle and unusual" -- Books of the Year, Spectator

"Elegantly written ... a literary gem" -- Sunday Telegraph

"It is an exotic world, a dangerous world, and
Hatoum has brought it to brilliant life." -- Sunday Telegraph, June 16, 2002

"Written with an acuity and tenderness, both impressive and moving" -- Salley Vickers, Author of Miss Garnet's Angel

'An exceptional and entrancing book' -- Scotland on Sunday, 8th July 2001

From the Publisher:

Quote
...The eighteenth century detail of this narrative of three, highly creative, brothers from the island of Cephalonia, is completely convincing - and yet there is never any sense that we are reading an ‘historical’ novel. Petrie Harbouri’s discreet, lucid prose takes us unobtrusively into each brother’s consciousness, with only the occasional oblique authorial aside to tactfully steer our responses... Most of all, the psychological interconnectedness of the three scattered brothers - the peculiar pains and joys of sibling relationship- is written with an acuity and tenderness which is impressive and moving. This unusual novel is in the best European tradition.'

Sally Vickers, author of Miss Garnet's Angel

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0747553424
• ISBN 13: 9780747553427
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320