Uncle Rudolf / Paul Bailey

Bailey, Paul (1937-)

ISBN 10: 1841157589 / ISBN 13: 9781841157580

Published by London : Fourth Estate, 2002

About this Item

Near fine copy in the original stiff-card wrappers; edges very slightly dust-dulled and toned. Remains particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Physical description; 183 p. ; 21 cm. Subjects; Autobiographical memory ; Fiction. Romanians England ; Fiction. Tenors (Singers) Europe ; Fiction. Europe Social life and customs 20th century ; Fiction. Genre; Fiction. 1 Kg.

Seller Inventory # 309437

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Uncle Rudolf / Paul Bailey
• Publisher: London : Fourth Estate
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1841157589
• ISBN 13: 9781841157580
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: First Edition, Uncorrected Proof.
• Weight: 1 kilogram

About this title

Synopsis

The haunting new novel from Paul Bailey, whose work has been short-listed twice for the Booker prize.

At the age of 70, Andrew Peters suddenly finds himself speaking in the language he has not used since childhood, when he came to live with his doting Uncle Rudolf . Rudolf transformed Andrew's world. Looking back across the years, Andrew remembers the captivating man who rescued him in 1937 from a likely death in fascist Romania. A sublimely gifted lyric tenor, Rudolf’s talent had exiled him from his native land, leading him to Paris, Vienna and London, where he became a much-loved star in operetta. He turns all his hopes and sardonic humour upon Andrew, and the gauche child from a remote country town becomes what Rudolf wants him to be – an English gentleman.

Vivid, often hilarious stories of Rudolf's brilliant but blighted career and of his eccentric household are intertwined with the slow unfolding of the secrets that have shadowed Andrew's otherwise happy life. Told in matchless prose, this deeply moving novel captures a vanished epoch and a way of life with exquisite tact and restraint.

About the Author

Paul Bailey is the author of At the Jerusalem (1967) which won the Somerset Maugham Award,Trespasses (1970),A Distant Likeness (1973), Peter Smart’s Confessions (1977), shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Old Soldiers (1980), and Sugar Cane (1993). He was the first recipient of the E.M. Forster Award and won a George Orwell Prize for his essay ‘The Limitations of Despair’.