Books Do Furnish A Room

Description

The tenth novel in Anthony Powell's brilliant twelve-novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time A Dance to the Music of Time chronicles the lives of over three hundred characters, and is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England. It is unrivalled for its scope, its humour and the enormous pleasure it has given to generations. Books Do Furnish a Room follows Nicholas Jenkins and a host of familiar and newer characters through the strains, absurdities and preoccupations of England at war.

Anthony Powell was an only child, born in 1905. As a young man he worked for a crumbling publishing business whilst trying to find time to write novels. He moved in a bohemian world of struggling writers and artists, which was to provide the raw material for much of his fiction. During the Second World War he served in Military Intelligence Liaison. He subsequently became a fiction reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and for five years he was the literary editor of the now-defunct magazine Punch. Meanwhile he continued to work on the twelve-novel sequence 'A Dance to the Music of Time'. He was the author of seven other novels, and four volumes of memoirs. His many reviews for the Daily Telegraph are also published in collected volumes. Anthony Powell died in March 2000.

"'I think it is now becoming clear that A Dance to the Music of Time is going to become the greatest modern novel since Ulysses'" -- Clive James "'I would rather read Mr Powell than any English novelist now writing'" -- Kingsley Amis "'Unquestionably the finest English comic novel of the period'" Sunday Times "'Intensely enjoyable - his dry, ironic descriptions are very funny indeed. A witty and shapely account of conventional English education'" Observer "'I find Powell the sort of writer who exerts such a strong pull that turning anyone else's books, after his, calls for an effort of will - One of the most individual tones of voice in contemporary novel-writing and one of the most artful'" -- Norman Shrapnel Guardian