Book description
Newly available as an ebook, from the Booker prize-winning author of
'Offshore' comes this Booker prize-shortlisted tale of a troubled Moscow printworks.
Frank Reid had been born and brought up in Moscow. His father had
emigrated there in the 1870s and started a print-works which, by 1913,
had shrunk from what it was when Frank inherited it. In that same year,
to add to his troubles, Frank's wife Nellie caught the train back home
to England, without explanation.
How is a reasonable man like Frank to cope? How should he keep his
house running? Should he consult the Anglican chaplain's wife? Should he
listen to the Tolstoyan advice of his chief book-keeper? How do people
live together, and what happens when, sometimes, they don't? 'Wise and
ironic, funny and humane, Fitzgerald is a wonderful, wonderful writer.'
David Nicholls
'Reading a Penelope Fitzgerald novel is like being taken for a ride in
a peculiar kind of car. Everything is of top quality - the engine, the
coachwork and the interior all fill you with confidence. Then, after a
mile or so, someone throws the steering-wheel out of the window.'
Sebastian Faulks
'It is one of the most skilful and utterly fascinating novels I have
read for years. I cannot imagine any kind of reader who would not get a
thrill from this gloriously peculiar book.' Jan Morris, Independent
'Penelope Fitzgerald has produced a real Russian comedy, at once crafty
and scatty. She has mastered a city, a landscape and a vanished time.
She has written something remarkable, part novel, part evocation, and
done so in prose that never puts a foot wrong.' Anita Brookner,
Spectator Penelope Fitzgerald was the author of nine novels, three of
which - The Bookshop, The Beginning of Spring and The Gate of Angels -
were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She won the prize in 1979 for
Offshore. A superb biographer and critic, she was also the author of
lives of the artist Edward Burne-Jones, the poet Charlotte Mew and The
Knox Brothers, a study of her remarkable family.
She died in April 2000.
