The noise of time
by Julian Barnes · first published 2016
3mentions
2recommended by
2HN commenters
2018–2023first – last mentioned
100% recommend
"A compact masterpiece dedicated to the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich--Julian Barnes's first novel since his best-selling, Booker Prize-winning The Sense of an Ending. 1936: Shostakovich, just thirty, fears for his livelihood and his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has taken a sudden interest in his work and denounced his latest opera. Now, certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, shot dead on the spot), he reflects on his predicament, his personal history, his parents, various women and wives, his children all of those hanging in the balance of his fate. And thou
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"The Noise of Time" by Julian Barnes It's an account of the life of Dmitri Shostakovitch during the eras of Stalin and Krushchev. It's fantastic at evoking the sense of suffocation of living under absolute all-seeing power…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗Slightly OT, but you can get a very good impression of what it was like to live in Stalin's Soviet Union from the Julian Barnes book "The Noise of Time", his autobiography of Dimitry Shostakovitch who lived a precarious life at times.
on “Beria and the Beautiful Game” ↗Worth noting that this is by Julian Barnes, author of one of my favourite books The Noise of Time - among others.
on “Painting is terribly difficult: on Monet” ↗