The Noise of Time

"A great novel, Barnes’s masterpiece… Exquisite, intimate detail. He has given us a novel that is powerfully affecting, a condensed masterpiece that traces the lifelong battle of one man’s conscience, one man’s art, with the insupportable exigencies of totalitarianism." (Alex Preston Observer)

"Barnes’s sombre, brilliant new novel opens with a scene like something from a story by Chekhov… Gleaming with intelligence and literary flair, this elegantly composed fictional meditation offers a fresh gloss on a musical genius’s collisions and collusions with power." (Peter Kemp Sunday Times)

"[Barnes is] a master of the narrative sidestep… Not just a novel about music, but something more like a musical novel… The story itself is structured in three parts that come together like a broken chord. It is a simple but brilliant device, and one that goes right to the heart of this novel." (Robert Douglas-Fairhurst The Times)

"A compelling novel about art and power, courage and cowardice, and the capriciousness of fate…Barnes brilliantly captures the composer’s conflicted state of mind…This book is only 190 pages long, but it packs an extraordinary emotional punch." (Sebastian Shakespeare Tatler)

"The writing in the early pages is magnificent… The reader has the confidence of being in the hands of a master storyteller… Barnes has a good sense of what life was like in the Soviet Union. He captures well the black humor, irony and cynicism." (Orlando Figes New York Review of Books)

"Julian Barnes’ novel deftly evokes the complexity of Shostakovich’s relationship with Stalin and the power of his oeuvre… Thick with period detail… The book returns us to the music itself, that immense 20th-century oeuvre that contains everything but confirms nothing." (Hedley Twidle Financial Times)

"Gripping… An intimately illuminating montage of Shostakovich’s life… Immediately engaging." (James Lasdun Guardian)

"A novel of deceptive slenderness... You expect nothing less from a writer soaked in Flaubert." (Duncan White Daily Telegraph)

"A series of elegant insights into the mind of a brilliant artist… Throughout, Barnes offers a surety of touch that few writers can match." (Independent on Sunday)

"[A] sad, self-lacerating and darkly funny hybrid of a novel. The Noise of Time is both a burrowing meditation on an artist’s lifelong relationship with totalitarian power, fear and compromise, and a fascinating fictional biography of one of the 20th century’s greatest composers… Barnes is a master." (Tod Wodicka The National)

»Ein Meisterwerk« (Die Presse, Spectrum)

»Ein außerordentlich guter Roman.« (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

»Barnes gelingt es, die Angst des Einzelnen vor der Macht in Szenen zu fassen, die der Leser nicht vergessen wird. Auf 250 Seiten finden sich perfekte Sätze in einer Dichte, wie man sie sonst nur bei F. Scott Fitzgerald liest.« (Stern)

»Es ist das beste Buch von Barnes seit mehr als zehn Jahren.« (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

»Wer den Künstler und Menschen [Dmitri Schostakowitsch] umweglos und intim kennenlernen möchte, sollte ohne Zögern zu Julian Barnes' Der Lärm der Zeit greifen.« (Spiegel Online)

»perfekt durchkomponierter Roman« (Rolling Stone)

»Dieses Buch ist eine ergreifende Darstellung der Schwäche des Einzelnen in der Konfrontation mit der Macht.« (hr-Info)

»Was macht dieses so leichte, so schwere Buch mit uns? Es versucht, schnelles Urteilen zu verhindern.« (Kurier)

»Ein großartiger Roman, Barnes’ Meisterstück. Wie in ›Vom Ende einer Geschichte‹ erzählt er ein ganzes Leben in einem schmalen Buch.« (The Guardian)

»Man liest das mit großem Vergnügen.« (Rolf-Bernhard Essig mdr Kultur)

“As elegantly constructed as a concerto . . . another brilliant thought-provoker which explores the cost of compromise and how much confrontation and concession a man and his conscience can endure.” —Heller McAlpin, National Public Radio

“Barnes’s storytelling is phenomenal; Shostakovich, as tragic and anxious as he is, is utterly fascinating.” —Leslie Rieder, The Christian Science Monitor

“This story is truly amazing . . . an arc of human degradation without violence (the threat of violence, of course, everywhere). . . . The whole Kafka madhouse brought to life.”—Jeremy Denk, The New York Times Book Review

“Timely and arresting . . . deeply engaging . . . [it] leads us to places only a handful of novelists have the skill and the courage to go. . . . I can’t recall any other recent book which offers such a prismatic perspective on the tension between revolutionary discipline and artistic freedom.” —Askold Melnyczuk, The Boston Globe

“[An] ambitious Orwellian allegory about the plight of artists in totalitarian societies—and a Kafkaesque parable about a fearful man’s efforts to wrestle with a surreal reality, even as he questions his complicity with the system. . . . Barnes’s book internalizes these debates, turning them into conversations within Shostakovich’s own head. On one hand, defending his need to survive and protect his family; on the other, cursing himself as a cowardly worm.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Elegiac and ultimately affecting. . . . With cerebral precision, Barnes depicts a life encased by history and defined, from the outset, by music.” —Anna Mundow, The Barnes & Noble Review

“Magnificent . . . Novels about artistic achievement rarely do justice to their subjects. The Noise of Time is that rarity. It is a novel of tremendous grace and power, giving voice to the complex and troubled man whose music outlasted the state that sought to silence him.” —Anthony Marra, Publishers Weekly

“A great novel, Barnes's masterpiece—the particular and intimate details of the life under consideration beget questions of universal significance; the operation of power upon art, the limits of courage and endurance, the sometimes intolerable demands of personal integrity and conscience. This novel, like [The Sense of an Ending], gives us the breath of a whole life within the pages of a slim book.” —Alex Preston, The Guardian

“Undoubtedly one of Barnes’s best novels.” —Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Sunday Times

“The Noise of Time tells the story of Dmitri Shostakovich, the Russian composer both feted and condemned by the Soviet state during his lifetime; but it does so not in aridly “truthful” fashion, but in full, delighted knowledge of how little use facts are in determining the essence of human experience, let alone its intersection with history and politics … A complex meditation on the power, limitations and likely endurance of art.” —Alex Clark, Observer

“Barnes brilliantly captures the composer’s conflicted state of mind, which culminates in the chilling realization that ‘death was preferable to endless terror.’ … Packs an extraordinary emotional punch.” —Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler

“[Barnes is] a master of the narrative sidestep… Not just a novel about music, but something more like a musical novel… The story itself is structured in three parts that come together like a broken chord. It is a simple but brilliant device, and one that goes right to the heart of this novel.”—Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Times

“A novel of deceptive slenderness… Barnes has reinvented himself once again.” —Duncan White, Daily Telegraph