“Let's kill the children and live happily ever after. The Noise of Time Julian Barnes Julian Barnes Shostakovich

“Not just a novel about music, but a musical novel. The story is told in three parts, merging like a triad” (The Times).

For the first time in Russian - the latest work by the illustrious Julian Barnes, winner of the Booker Prize, one of the brightest and most original prose writers of modern Britain, author of such international bestsellers as "England, England", "Flaubert's Parrot", "Love and so on", "Premonition end" and many others. This time, “by far the most elegant stylist and the most unpredictable master of all conceivable literary forms” refers to the life of Dmitry Shostakovich, and in the anniversary year: in September 2016, the whole world will celebrate 110 years since the birth of the great Russian composer. However, writing a fictionalized biography excites Barnes least of all, and he aims much higher: having as an artist a license for any fantasies, in love with Russian literature and excellent command of the context, he builds his construction on the shaky ground of Soviet history, full of omissions and half-truths...

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"What I read about Shostakovich convinces me: he no longer wanted to deal with such an inconvenient thing as life, not to mention such terrible things as politics and power."

“Not just a novel about music, but a musical novel. The story is told in three parts, merging like a triad” (The Times).

Abstract: "For the first time in Russian - the latest work of the illustrious Julian Barnes, winner of the Booker Prize, one of the brightest and most original prose writers of modern Britain, the author of such international bestsellers as "England, England", "Flaubert's Parrot", "Love and so on" , "Premonition of the End" and many others. This time, "by far the most elegant stylist and the most unpredictable master of all conceivable literary forms" refers to the life of Dmitry Shostakovich, and in the anniversary year: in September 2016, the whole world will celebrate 110 years from the day the birth of the great Russian composer. However, writing a fictionalized biography excites Barnes the least, and he aims much higher: having as an artist a license for any fantasies, in love with Russian literature and excellent command of the context, he builds his structure.

Such a large-scale figure as the great Russian composer Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich is difficult to fit into the volume of a small novel. Therefore, the music itself, as a source of greatness, remains outside the scope of the plot, mentioned only by dates and numbered markings. The narrative is focused on the key moments of the biography related to the confrontation between the creator and the authorities: the painful expectation of arrest after murderous criticism on the pages of the party press, the humiliating participation in the propaganda visit of Soviet cultural figures to the United States, forced membership in the Communist Party and leadership of the hateful Union of Composers...

Those were the days of moral ups and downs, betrayals and forced compromises, but it is hardly worth blaming the brilliant protagonist for sacrificing dignity in favor of well-being, by the way, of his own and those close to him. Not everyone can be a hero, and the question of what is more important, creativity or honor, remains open to this day. Surviving in cloudy times, bending before the noble ignoramuses, Shostakovich miraculously managed to avoid unforgivable abominations. The noise of time is a metaphor for the unrighteous, empty fuss that is commonly called "life". Only art, only high music can overcome it. In his declining years, Shostakovich was favored by the authorities and critics, he received all conceivable awards, but humanity was also fully rewarded by his music.

Arguments against. The book of the famous English novelist Julian Barnes does not claim to be included in the Life of Remarkable People series. Due to its compactness, it is more like a synopsis of a big failed novel. Attempts to reflect the thoughts of the brilliant musician in the days of his trials look shallow and even naive, and the personal assessments of individual contemporaries and colleagues of Shostakovich are also doubtful. Do not trust the enthusiasm of critics who called Barnes' novel "one of the best": in his track record, this work looks superficial and optional.

Arguments for. One of the greatest writers of our time, the Booker Prize winner turns to the life of our compatriot ─ this is interesting in itself. Julian Barnes promises a combination of brevity, complexity, talent and tragedy: "What I read about Shostakovich convinces me that towards the end of his life he could not wait for death, and this expectation was reflected in his music. He no longer wanted to deal with with such an uncomfortable thing as life, not to mention such terrible things as politics and power. And music allowed you to escape from social circumstances. " Although the novel was created in English, Barnes tried to convey the peculiarities of Russian speech, tracing our idioms and characteristic phrases. One of the foreign critics even compared The Noise of Time with Lermontov's prose.

Dedicated to Pat

Who to listen

Whom to wind on the mustache

And who should drink bitter.

THE NOISE OF TIME

All rights reserved

Translation from English by Elena Petrova

A great novel in the literal sense of the word, a true masterpiece from the Booker Prize-winning author of Premonitions of the End. It would seem that he had read not so many pages - but as if he had lived a whole life.

The Guardian

A new book by Julian Barnes, dedicated to Shostakovich and his life in the era of terror and thaw, is booming in the UK. But Barnes's ambitions are certainly greater than writing a fictionalized biography of the great composer in his jubilee year. Barnes is only playing an informed biographer, and the shaky ground of Soviet history, largely consisting of unverified information and outright lies, suits this perfectly: there are many truths, choose any other person, by definition, is an incomprehensible mystery.

Moreover, the case of Shostakovich is special: Barnes largely relies on the scandalous "Evidence" of Solomon Volkov, to whom the composer either dictated his memoirs, or partially dictated, or did not dictate at all. One way or another, the author has an artist's license for any fantasy, and the ability to get into the head of Shostakovich invented by him allows Barnes to write what he wants: a magnificent reflection on the rules of survival in a totalitarian society, on how art is made, and, of course, about conformity.

Barnes, who is in love with Russian literature, has studied the language and has even been to the USSR, shows an impressive grasp of context. At the level of names, facts, toponyms - this is a necessary minimum, but not only: in understanding the structure of life, the system of relations, some linguistic features. Barnes now and then trumps phrases like “a fisherman sees a fisherman from afar”, “he will fix a humpbacked grave” or “to live life is not to cross a field” (“Zhivago”, of course, he read carefully). And when the hero begins to make up for his reasoning Yevtushenko's poem about Galileo, this suddenly seems not like the painstaking preparation of a British intellectual, but some kind of completely authentic good-heartedness of a Soviet intellectual.

Stanislav Zelvensky (Afisha Daily / Brain)

Not just a novel about music, but a musical novel. The story is told in three parts, merging like a triad.

The Times

Gustave Flaubert died at the age of 59. At this age, the famous writer Julian Barnes, whose deity was and remains Flaubert, wrote a novel about Arthur Conan Doyle investigating a real crime.

Barnes turned 70 and released a novel about Shostakovich. The novel has a Mandelstam title - "The Noise of Time".

Barnes, tirelessly praising not only Flaubert, but also Russian literature, hints in the title at once at three cultural and historical levels. The first is Mandelstam himself, who died in the camp a year after 1937, when Shostakovich was teetering on the brink of death. The second is the music of Shostakovich, which the Soviet ghouls called "mess", that is, noise. Finally, the noise of the terrible 20th century, from which Shostakovich drew music - and from which, of course, he tried to escape.

Kirill Kobrin (bbcrussian.com / London Books)

The novel is deceptively modest in scope ... Barnes again started with a clean slate.

The Daily Telegraph

Barnes began his book with an attempt at some non-standard structure - on the first pages he gave a digest of the themes of Shostakovich's life, which then emerge in detail. This is an attempt to build a book about the composer precisely musically, leitmotifically. One of these motifs is the recollection of the dacha of Shostakovich's parents, which had spacious rooms, but small windows: there was, as it were, a mixture of two measures, meters and centimeters. So in the later life of the composer this theme unfolds: a huge talent, squeezed into the fetters of petty and hostile guardianship.

Still, Barnes sees his hero as a winner. A running aphorism runs through the book: history is the whisper of music that drowns out the noise of time.

Boris Paramonov (Radio Liberty)

Definitely one of Barnes' best novels.

Sunday Times

This meets not only my aesthetic perception, but also my interests - the spirit of the book is best expressed through style, through the use of certain turns of speech, slightly strange turns of phrase, which can sometimes resemble a translated text. This, I think, gives the reader a sense of time and place. I don't want to write something like "he walked down such and such a street, turned left and saw a famous old candy store opposite or something like that." I do not create the atmosphere of time and place in this way. I'm sure it's much better to do it through prose. Any reader is able to understand what is at stake, the meaning is quite clear, but the wording is slightly different from the usual, and you think: “Yes, I'm in Russia now.” At least I really hope you feel it.

Julian Barnes

In his generation of writers, Barnes is by far the most elegant stylist and the most unpredictable master of all conceivable literary forms.

The Scotsman

It was at the height of the war, at a half-station, flat and dusty, like an endless plain all around. The lazy train left Moscow for two days heading east; there were still two or three days of travel left - depending on the availability of coal and on the transfer of troops. At dawn, some peasant was already moving along the train: one might say, half-hearted, on a low cart with wooden wheels. To control this device, it was necessary to deploy where required, the leading edge; and in order not to slip, the invalid inserted a rope into the harnesses of his trousers, passed under the frame of the cart. His hands were wrapped in blackened rags, and his skin had hardened as he begged in the streets and train stations.

His father went through the imperialist. With the blessing of the village priest, he went to fight for the king and the fatherland. And when he returned, he did not find either the father or the tsar, and the fatherland was unrecognizable.

The wife wailed when she saw what the war had done to her husband. The war was different, but the enemies are the same, except that the names have changed, and on both sides. And the rest - in the war as in the war: young guys were sent first under enemy fire, and then to the horse-surgeons. His legs were chopped off in a military field hospital, among the windbreak. All sacrifices, as in the last war, were justified by a great goal. But it doesn't make it any easier for him. Let others scratch their tongues, but he has his own concern: to stretch the day until evening. He has become a survivalist. Below a certain threshold, such a fate awaits all men: to become specialists in survival.

A handful of passengers descended onto the platform to take a sip of dusty air; the rest loomed outside the windows of the carriages. At the train, the beggar used to start a rollicking wagon song. Perhaps someone will throw a penny or two in gratitude for the entertainment, and whoever doesn’t like it will also give money, if only they would drive further as soon as possible. Others contrived to throw coins on edge to mock when he, pushing off the concrete platform with his fists, started up in pursuit. Then other passengers usually served more carefully - some out of pity, some out of shame. He saw only sleeves, fingers and change, but did not listen. He himself was one of those who drink bitter.

Two fellow travelers, traveling in a soft carriage, stood at the window and wondered where they were now and how long they would stay here: a couple of minutes, a couple of hours, or a day. No announcements were broadcast over the broadcast, and it’s more expensive to be interested. If you are at least three times a passenger, and as soon as you begin to ask questions about the movement of trains, they will take him for a pest. Both were in their thirties, at that age some lessons were already firmly established. A lean, nervous, bespectacled man, one of those who listen, hung garlic cloves on a string around himself. History has not preserved the name of his companion; this one was one of those that wind up on the mustache.

A cart with a half beggar was approaching their carriage, rattling. He bawled dashing couplets about village indecency. Stopping under the window, he gestured for food. In response, the bespectacled man raised a bottle of vodka in front of him. Out of courtesy, I decided to clarify. Is it ever heard of a beggar refusing to drink? Less than a minute later, those two descended to him on the platform.

I mean, there was an opportunity to figure out for three. The bespectacled man still held the bottle, and his companion brought out three glasses. Poured, but somehow not equally; the passengers bent down and said, as it should be, "we will be healthy." Clink glasses; the nervous thin man tilted his head to one side, which caused the rising sun to blaze for a moment in the glasses, and whispered something; the other chuckled. Drank to the bottom. The beggar immediately held out his glass, demanding to repeat it. The drinking buddies splashed him the rest, then they took the glasses and went up to their carriage. Blissful from the warmth that spread over the crippled body, the invalid rolled to the next group of passengers. By the time the two fellow travelers settled in the compartment, the one who heard it had almost forgotten what he himself said. And the one that I remembered, just began to shake his mustache.

Part one
On the landing

ABOUT He knew one thing for certain: the worst of times had come.

For three hours he languished at the elevator. I was already smoking my fifth cigarette, and my thoughts wandered.

Faces, names, memories. Peat briquette - weight in the palm of your hand. Swedish waterfowl beat their wings overhead. Sunflowers, whole fields. Aroma of cologne "Carnation". The warm, sweet smell of Nita leaving the tennis court. Forehead wet with sweat dripping from the toe of the hair. Faces, names.

And also the names and faces of those who are no longer there.

Nothing prevented him from bringing a chair from the apartment. But one way or another, nerves would not let me sit still. Yes, and the picture would be quite defiant: a man is sitting on a chair waiting for the elevator.

Thunder struck out of the blue, but it had its own logic. It's always like that in life. Take at least attraction to a woman. It rolls unexpectedly, unexpectedly, although it is quite logical.

He tried to focus all his thoughts on Nita, but they, noisy and importunate, like blowflies, did not give in. They dived, of course, on Tanya. Then, buzzing, they were carried away to that girl, Rosalia. Was he blushing at the thought of her, or was he secretly proud of his wild escapade?

The patronage of the marshal - after all, it also turned out to be unexpected and at the same time quite logical. And the fate of the marshal himself?

The good-natured, bearded face of Jurgensen - and then the memory of the harsh, inexorable mother's fingers on the wrist. And the father, the sweetest, charming, modest father, who stands at the piano and sings "The chrysanthemums in the garden have faded a long time ago."

A cacophony of sounds in my head. Father's voice waltzes and polkas that accompanied the courtship of Nita; four F-sharp screams of the factory siren; the barking of stray dogs, drowning out the timid bassoonist; revelry of percussion and brass under the armored government box.

These noises were interrupted by one very real one: a sudden mechanical growl and the grinding of an elevator. A leg twitched, knocking over a nearby suitcase. The memory suddenly vanished, and its place was filled with fear. But the elevator stopped with a click somewhere below, and mental abilities were restored. Picking up the suitcase, he felt the contents shift gently inside. Why thoughts immediately rushed to the story of Prokofiev's pajamas.

No, not like blowflies. More like mosquitoes that swarm in Anapa. They covered the whole body, they drank the blood.

Standing on the landing, he thought he had control over his thoughts. But later, in the solitude of the night, it seemed to him that thoughts themselves had taken all power over him. And there is no protection from the fates, as the poet says. And there is no protection from thoughts either.

He recalled how he was in pain the night before his appendicitis operation. Twenty-two times vomiting began; all the swear words he knew fell upon the sister of mercy, and in the end he began to ask a friend to bring a policeman who could put an end to all the torment in one fell swoop. Let him shoot me from the threshold, he prayed. But a friend refused to let him go.

Now neither a friend nor a policeman is needed anymore. Well-wishers abound.

To be precise, he spoke to his thoughts, it all started on the morning of the twenty-eighth of January 1936 at the railway station in Arkhangelsk. No, thoughts echoed, nothing begins in this manner, on a particular day, in a particular place. It all started in different places, at different times, and often even before you were born, in foreign lands and in foreign minds.

And once started, everything goes on as usual - in other lands, and in other minds.

His own mind was now occupied with smoke: "Belomor", "Kazbek", "Herzegovina Flor". Someone guts cigarettes to fill a pipe, leaving a scattering of cardboard tubes and scraps of paper on the desk.

Is it possible at the current stage, although belatedly, to change everything, fix it, return it to its place? He knew the answer - as the doctor said to the request to put his nose on: “Of course, you can put it on; but I assure you that it is worse for you.”

Then Zakrevsky came to mind, and the Big House itself, and who would replace Zakrevsky in it. A holy place is never empty. This world is so arranged that there are a dime a dozen Zakrevskikhs in it. That's when paradise will be built, and it will take almost exactly two hundred billion years, the need for such Zakrevskys will disappear.

It happens that what is happening is beyond comprehension.

This cannot be, because this can never be, as the mayor said at the sight of the giraffe. But no: it can be, and it happens.

Fate. This majestic word simply denotes something that you are powerless against. When life announces: "And therefore ...", you nod in agreement, believing that fate is speaking to you. And therefore: it was appointed to be called Dmitry Dmitrievich. And you won't write anything. Of course, he did not remember his christening, but he never doubted the veracity of the family tradition. The family gathered in my father's study around a portable font. The priest arrived and asked the parents what name they had chosen for the baby. Yaroslav, they answered. Yaroslav? The father winced. He said that the name is too catchy. He added that a child with that name would be teased and pecked at school; no, no, it’s impossible to call Yaroslav. Such an undisguised rebuff puzzled my father and mother, but I did not want to offend anyone. What name do you suggest? they asked. Yes, it’s easier, answered the father. For example, Dmitry. The father pointed out that his own name was already Dmitry and that "Yaroslav Dmitrievich" was much more pleasant to listen to than "Dmitry Dmitrievich". But the priest - in any. And therefore, Dmitry Dmitrievich entered the world.

And what's in the name? He was born in St. Petersburg, grew up in Petrograd, and grew up in Leningrad. Or in St. Leninburg, as he used to say. Does the name really matter?

He was thirty-one years old. A few meters from him, his wife Nita is sleeping in the apartment, next to her is Galina, their one-year-old daughter. Galya. Lately, his life seems to have taken a turn for the better. He somehow did not characterize this side of things directly. Strong emotions are not alien to him, but for some reason it is impossible to express them. Even at football, he, unlike other fans, almost never bawls, does not buzz; it suits him to sotto voce the skill - or mediocrity - of a particular player. Some see in this the typical stiffness of a button-up Leningrader, but he himself knows that behind this (or under this) shyness and anxiety lurk. True, with women he tries to throw off shyness and rushes from ridiculous enthusiasm to desperate uncertainty. It's like the metronome is skipping out of order.

And still, his life eventually acquired some orderliness, and with it - the right rhythm. However, now uncertainty has returned again. Uncertainty is a euphemism, if not worse.

The suitcase with the essentials standing at the foot reminded me of the failed departure from home. At what age was it? Probably seven or eight years old. And did he take the suitcase at that time? No, it's unlikely - my mother would not allow it. It was a summer in Irinovka, where my father served in a leadership position. And Jurgensen was hired as a laborer to them in a country estate. He made, repaired, coped with any business in such a way that even a child was pleased to watch. He never taught, but only showed how even a saber, even a whistle, is obtained from a piece of wood. And once he brought him a fresh peat briquette and gave him a sniff.

To Jurgensen, he reached out with all his heart. He said, offended by one of the household (and this happened often): “Well, okay, I’ll leave you for Jurgensen.” Once, in the morning, before he got out of bed, he had already voiced this threat, or perhaps a promise. Mother didn't make him repeat it twice. Get dressed, she ordered, I'll take you. He did not fold (no, it was not possible to collect things); Sofya Vasilievna firmly squeezed his wrist and led him across the meadow in the direction of Jurgensen's hut. At first, walking nonchalantly next to his mother, he swaggered. But soon he was already trailing foot by foot; wrist, and then the palm began to be released from the maternal vice. At that time it seemed to him that He breaks out, but now it became clear: the mother herself gradually let him go, finger by finger, until she completely freed him. She released him not so that he would go to Jurgensen, but so that he would burst into tears and rush back to the house.

Hands: some slip out, others reach greedily. As a child, he was afraid of the dead: suddenly they would rise from the graves and drag him into the cold, black darkness, where his eyes and mouth would clog with earth. This fear gradually receded, because the hands of the living turned out to be even more terrible. Petrograd prostitutes did not take into account his youth and inexperience. The harder the times, the harder the hands. So they strive to grab you by the causal place, take away food, deprive friends, relatives, livelihood, and even life itself. Almost as much as prostitutes, he was afraid of janitors. And those - whatever you call them - who serve in the organs.

But there is also a fear of the opposite nature: the fear of letting go of the hand that protects you.

Marshal Tukhachevsky defended him. Not one year. Until the day when, before his eyes, sweat began to trickle down his forehead from the marshal's toe. A snow-white handkerchief fanned and soaked these trickles, and it became clear: the protection was over.

More versatile people than the marshal, he did not remember. Tukhachevsky, a famous military theorist throughout the country, was called the Red Napoleon in the newspapers. In addition, the marshal loved music and made violins with his own hands, had a receptive, inquisitive mind, and willingly talked about literature. For ten years of their acquaintance, the marshal in his jacket kept flashing on the streets of Moscow and Leningrad after dark: not forgetting either about duty or about the joys of life, he successfully combined politics and pleasant pastime, talked and argued, drank and ate, did not hid his weakness for ballerinas. He said that the French at one time revealed to him a secret: how to drink champagne without getting drunk.

He failed to adopt this secular gloss. Self-confidence was not enough; and there was no particular desire, apparently. He did not understand fine delicacies, he quickly got tipsy. In his student years, when everything was being reassessed and reworked, and the party had not yet taken full state power, he, like most students, pretended to be a philosopher, without having any reason to. The issue of gender relations was also inevitably subject to revision: as soon as outdated views were discarded once and for all, someone at every opportunity referred to the "glass of water" theory. Intimate intimacy, the young wise men said, is like a glass of water: to quench your thirst, it is enough to drink water, and to quench your desire, it is enough to have sexual intercourse. In general, such a system did not arouse objections from him, although it necessarily assumed a reciprocal desire on the part of the girls. Some people have a desire, others do not. But this analogy worked only within certain limits. A glass of water did not reach the heart.

And besides everything else, then Tanya had not yet appeared in his life.

When, as a child, he once again announced his intention to go live with Jurgensen, his parents, apparently, saw this as a rebellion against the rigid framework of the family, and possibly even childhood itself.

Now, upon mature reflection, he sees something else. There was something strange about their dacha in Irinovka—something profoundly wrong. Like any child, he didn't suspect any of this until it was explained to him. Only from the mocking conversations of adults did he understand that all proportions were violated in this house. The rooms are huge and the windows are small. For a room with an area of, say, fifty square meters, there could be one single window, and even then a tiny one. Adults believed that the builders made a mistake - they confused meters with centimeters. And the result was a house that terrified the child. As if this dacha was purposely invented for the most terrible dreams. Perhaps that is why he was drawn to carry his feet out of there.

They were always picked up at night. And therefore, so that he would not be dragged out of the apartment in his pajamas and not forced to dress under the contemptuously indifferent gaze of a law enforcement officer, he decided that he would go to bed dressed, over a blanket, having put the assembled suitcase by the bed in advance. There was no sleep; tossing and turning in bed, he pictured to himself the worst thing imaginable. His anxiety was transmitted to Nita, who also suffered from insomnia. Both lay and pretended; each pretended that the fear of the other had neither sound nor smell. And in the afternoon he was haunted by another nightmare: suddenly the NKVD would take Galya and place her - this is at best - in an orphanage for the children of enemies of the people. Where she will be given a new name and a new biography, where she will be raised as an exemplary Soviet person, a small sunflower who will turn after the great sun named Stalin. Than toiling from the inevitable insomnia, it is better to wait for the elevator on the landing. Nita demanded that all nights, each of which could be their last, they spent together. However, this was the rare case when, in a dispute, he insisted on his own.

Julian Barnes

noise of time

Dedicated to Pat

Who to listen

Whom to wind on the mustache

And who should drink bitter.

THE NOISE OF TIME

All rights reserved

Translation from English by Elena Petrova

A great novel in the literal sense of the word, a true masterpiece from the Booker Prize-winning author of Premonitions of the End. It would seem that he had read not so many pages - but as if he had lived a whole life.

The Guardian

A new book by Julian Barnes, dedicated to Shostakovich and his life in the era of terror and thaw, is booming in the UK. But Barnes's ambitions are certainly greater than writing a fictionalized biography of the great composer in his jubilee year. Barnes is only playing an informed biographer, and the shaky ground of Soviet history, largely consisting of unverified information and outright lies, suits this perfectly: there are many truths, choose any other person, by definition, is an incomprehensible mystery.

Moreover, the case of Shostakovich is special: Barnes largely relies on the scandalous "Evidence" of Solomon Volkov, to whom the composer either dictated his memoirs, or partially dictated, or did not dictate at all. One way or another, the author has an artist's license for any fantasy, and the ability to get into the head of Shostakovich invented by him allows Barnes to write what he wants: a magnificent reflection on the rules of survival in a totalitarian society, on how art is made, and, of course, about conformity.

Barnes, who is in love with Russian literature, has studied the language and has even been to the USSR, shows an impressive grasp of context. At the level of names, facts, toponyms - this is a necessary minimum, but not only: in understanding the structure of life, the system of relations, some linguistic features. Barnes now and then trumps phrases like “a fisherman sees a fisherman from afar”, “he will fix a humpbacked grave” or “to live life is not to cross a field” (“Zhivago”, of course, he read carefully). And when the hero begins to make up for his reasoning Yevtushenko's poem about Galileo, this suddenly seems not like the painstaking preparation of a British intellectual, but some kind of completely authentic good-heartedness of a Soviet intellectual.

Stanislav Zelvensky (Afisha Daily / Brain)

Not just a novel about music, but a musical novel. The story is told in three parts, merging like a triad.

The Times

Gustave Flaubert died at the age of 59. At this age, the famous writer Julian Barnes, whose deity was and remains Flaubert, wrote a novel about Arthur Conan Doyle investigating a real crime. Barnes turned 70 and released a novel about Shostakovich. The novel has a Mandelstam title - "The Noise of Time".

Barnes, tirelessly praising not only Flaubert, but also Russian literature, hints in the title at once at three cultural and historical levels. The first is Mandelstam himself, who died in the camp a year after 1937, when Shostakovich was teetering on the brink of death. The second is the music of Shostakovich, which the Soviet ghouls called "mess", that is, noise. Finally, the noise of the terrible 20th century, from which Shostakovich drew music - and from which, of course, he tried to escape.

Kirill Kobrin (bbcrussian.com / London Books)

The novel is deceptively modest in scope ... Barnes again started with a clean slate.

The Daily Telegraph

Barnes began his book with an attempt at some non-standard structure - on the first pages he gave a digest of the themes of Shostakovich's life, which then emerge in detail. This is an attempt to build a book about the composer precisely musically, leitmotifically. One of these motifs is the recollection of the dacha of Shostakovich's parents, which had spacious rooms, but small windows: there was, as it were, a mixture of two measures, meters and centimeters. So in the later life of the composer this theme unfolds: a huge talent, squeezed into the fetters of petty and hostile guardianship.

Still, Barnes sees his hero as a winner. A running aphorism runs through the book: history is the whisper of music that drowns out the noise of time.

Boris Paramonov (Radio Liberty)

Definitely one of Barnes' best novels.

Sunday Times

This meets not only my aesthetic perception, but also my interests - the spirit of the book is best expressed through style, through the use of certain turns of speech, slightly strange turns of phrase, which can sometimes resemble a translated text. This, I think, gives the reader a sense of time and place. I don't want to write something like "he walked down such and such a street, turned left and saw a famous old candy store opposite or something like that." I do not create the atmosphere of time and place in this way. I'm sure it's much better to do it through prose. Any reader is able to understand what is at stake, the meaning is quite clear, but the wording is slightly different from the usual, and you think: “Yes, I'm in Russia now.” At least I really hope you feel it.