LoveReading Says
One of our Debuts of the Year 2011.
One of our Great Reads you may have missed in 2011.
A dual narrative novel of World War I and today where two men face impossible odds. It all revolves around the possible discovery of the ending to Mahler’s unfinished symphony and the lengths an obsessed individual will go to acquire it. This contrasts with the horrors of the war in an epic novel, atmospheric with guardian angels, science, love and cowardice bound into some very human stories, highly satisfactory.
January 2011 Book of the Month.
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2010.
Costa Book Awards 2010 Judges' comment: "A novel of remarkable ambition that reads like a thriller. Strange, unforgettable and morally courageous."
The Lovereading view...
The Blasphemer is a story about conditional love, cowardice and the possibility of redemption - and what happens to a man of science when forced to question his certainties. It is a novel of rare depth, empathy and ambition that sweeps from the trenches of the First World War to the terrorist-besieged streets of London today: a novel that will speak to the head as well as the heart of any reader. He had always been scared of flying. With echoes of Birdsong it reads at the pace of a thriller.
Sarah Broadhurst
Find This Book In
The Blasphemer Synopsis
On its way to the Galapagos Islands, a light aircraft ditches into the sea. As the water floods through the cabin, zoologist Daniel Kennedy faces an impossible choice - should he save himself, or Nancy, the woman he loves? In a parallel narrative, it is 1917 and Daniel's great grandfather Andrew is preparing to go over the top at Passchendaele. He, too, will have his courage tested, and must live with the moral consequences of his actions. Back in London, the atheistic Daniel is wrestling with something his 'cold philosophy' cannot explain - something unearthly he thought he saw while swimming for help in the Pacific. But before he can make sense of it, the past must collapse into the present, and both he and Andrew must prove themselves capable of altruism, and deserving of forgiveness. The Blasphemer is a story about conditional love, cowardice and the possibility of redemption - and what happens to a man of science when forced to question his certainties. It is a novel of rare depth, empathy and ambition that sweeps from the trenches of the First World War to the terrorist-besieged streets of London today: a novel that will speak to the head as well as the heart of any reader.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780552776172 |
| Publication date: |
6th January 2011 |
| Author: |
Nigel Farndale |
| Publisher: |
Black Swan an imprint of Transworld Publishers Ltd |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
496 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
|
| Other Genres: |
|
| Recommendations: |
|
