Author: MCCANN, COLUM
Title: Dancer
Description: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, UK, 2003. First Edition, Softcover. Very Good Condition. 9780753817049 384 pages. Available Now. Book Description: Stunning, bestselling novel based on the real life of Rudolf Nureyev from an acclaimed author.: This novel opens on a battlefield: trudging back from the front through a ravaged and icy wasteland, their horses dying around them, their own hunger rendering them almost savage, the Russian soldiers are exhausted as they reach the city of Ufa, desperate for food and shelter. They find both, and then music and dance. And there, spinning unafraid among them, dancing for the soldiers and anyone else who'll watch him, is one small pale boy, Rudolf. : This is Colum McCann's dancer: Rudolf, a prodigy at six years old, who became the greatest dancer of the century, who redefined dance, rewrote his own life, and died of AIDS before anyone knew he had it. This is an extraordinary life transformed into extraordinary fiction by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation. One kind of masculine grace is perfectly matched to another in Colum McCann's beautiful and daring new novel. : Amazon Review: Dancer, like Colum McCann's previous novels This Side of Brightness and Songdogs, is an elegant weave of historical fact and fictional imagining. Here his central character is the late, great, Rudolf Nureyev--the Soviet dancer who defected to the West at the height of the Cold War, partnered Margot Fonteyn and became ballet's first international male superstar. The real Nureyev remains an enigmatic, even iconic figure--as infamous for his petulance, lavish lifestyle, voracious sexual appetite and tragic AIDS-related death as for his dancing. McCann wisely eschews a straightforward account of Rudolf's outrageous life. His sympathetic portrait of the priapic star, which seems oddly weak on dance itself but certainly has scenes to rival The Satyricon, is ingeniously discursive. Nureyev is often more omnipresent than actually present--his story related through a serious of diary entries, reports and different narrative perspectives and voices, including the dancer's own. (On occasions, he even briefly drops from view entirely and the travails of his family, friends and his mentors, the Vasilevas, come to the fore.) : Divided into four loosely chronological sections, the novel spans the length of Nureyev's dancing career, opening in Stalin's war-ravaged Russia, where the young Rudolf earned sugar lumps for entertaining wounded soldiers, and closing with his last sickly, performance and a final, fleeting, visit home. Exile and displacement are really the chief themes of the book and McCann's Nureyev is a man scarred and agitated by the decision to abandon his homeland. I dance, he notes at one point, so much--too much--in order not to think of home. McCann seems to imply, however, that it is his disapproving father, who never saw him dance, who fuelled his relentless ambition. Forays into cod-Freudian psychoanalysis aside, this gripping reinvention of Nureyev, rich in period detail and characterisation, is well conceived, marvellously wrought and eminently readable. --Travis Elborough -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf?_gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels. : Review: 'The theme of towering celebrity and its attendant vacuity is very well done.' (Chris Power THE TIMES): 'DANCER overflows with vibrant detail and evocative description.....McCann's books has a tremendous amount of life and energy.' (THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY): McCann has achieved a tour de force in his re-imagined life of Rudolf Nureyev..... McCann spins a verbal rhapsody out of Nureyev's passions and longings, by turns soulful, flamboyant, in your face. (Brian Hennigan THE HERALD): 'Whether describing the Russian stepppe or New York's bathhouses, McCann's versatility is breathtaking.' (Elena Seymenliyska THE GUARDIAN): McCann's fictionalised biography of ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev met with wide critical acclaim on its January publication and its availability in paperback will open up this remarkable story to a new audience' (HEAT): 'a mesmerising novel' (THE OBSERVER): McCann's remarkable novel...... McCann's prose - nimble, lyrical and wispy - does full justice to the tragic story of a dancer who was the glory of his generation (THE SUNDAY TIMES): 'it's a strikingly original one (book), and as apparently effortless as one of Fonteyn's pirouettes or Nureyev's leaps into space. (Arminta Wallace THE IRISH TIMES): a truly extraordinary novel (FAST FORWARD): this is a brilliant portrait of an artist who could soar heavenwards on clay feet. (SUNDAY INDEPENDENT) Size: 13.3 x 2.4 x 19.9 cm. 384 pages. Quantity Available: 1. Category: Fiction; Paperback; ISBN: 0753817047. ISBN/EAN: 9780753817049. Inventory No: F246-1145.

Keywords: BZDB395 Fiction; Paperback; Dancer Colum McCann Paperback


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