Winnie and Wolf - Couverture rigide

Wilson, A. N.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0374290962 ISBN 13 : 9780374290962

Editeur : Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2008

Synopsis

Book by Wilson A N

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

Winnie and Wolf is the story of the extraordinary relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler that took place during the years 1923-40, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner house in Bayreuth.

Winifred, an English girl, brought up in an orphanage in East Grinstead, married at the age of eighteen to the son of Germany's most controversial genius, is a passionate Germanophile, a Wagnerian dreamer, a Teutonic patriot.

In the debacle of the post-Versailles world, the Wagner family hope for the coming, not of a warrior, a fearless Siegfried, but of a Parsifal, a mystic idealist, a redeemer-figure. In 1923, they meet their Parsifal - a wild-eyed Viennese opera-fanatic in a trilby hat, a mac and a badly fitting suit. Hitler has already made a name for himself in some sections of German society through rabble-rousing and street corner speeches. It is Winifred, though, who believes she can really see his poetry. Almost at once they drop formalities and call one another 'Du' rather than 'Sie'. She is Winnie and he is Wolf.

Like Winnie, Hitler was an outsider. Like her, he was haunted by the impossibility of reconciling the pursuit of love and the pursuit of power; the ultimate inevitability, if you pursued power, of destruction. Both had known the humiliations of poverty. Both felt angry and excluded by society. Both found each other in an unusual kinship that expressed itself through a love of opera.

In A.N. Wilson's most bold and ambitious novel yet, the world of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is brilliantly recreated, and forms the backdrop to this incredible bond, which ultimately reveals the remarkable capacity of human beings to deceive themselves.

Quatrième de couverture

Praise for
A JEALOUS GHOST

'A must for James admirers and everyone else who appreciates fine writing and an original story' Ruth Rendell, Guardian

'A convincing, compelling and icy reworking of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw' Beryl Bainbridge, 'Books of the Year', Observer

'Chilling... Like The Turn of the Screw, once you have read A Jealous Ghost, I'm afraid you won't be able to get it out of your head. Ever? Quite possibly' Susan Hill, Spectator

'Wilson has always been a brilliant storyteller, who ­- unlike many of his no less famous contemporaries - is incapable of ever writing a boring line... Masterly' Francis King, Literary Review

'Wilson writes, as ever, with such ease and assurance... It is comic but also unsettling, madness depicted with the lightest of touches' Allan Massie, Scotsman

'Ingenious, entertaining... Wilson has told his story skilfully and even with a certain Jamesian cunning' John Banville, Irish Times

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Date d'édition: 2008
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0374290962
• ISBN 13: 9780374290962
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 363
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible