This prize-winning author is set to win attention: previous novel Miss Webster and Cherif was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize - Best Book (Europe and South Asia region); Hallucinating Foucault won the McKitterick Prize and the Dillons' First Fiction Award; and Monsieur Shoushana's Lemon Trees was shortlisted for the Macmillan Silver Pen Award Louis de Bernieres, Philip Hensher and A. S. Byatt are all high-profile fans of Patricia Duncker
Patricia Duncker is the author of four previous novels: Hallucinating Foucault (winner of the Dillons First Fiction Award and the McKitterick Prize in 1996), The Deadly Space Between, James Miranda Barry and Miss Webster and Cherif (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2007). She has written two books of short fiction, Monsieur Shoushana's Lemon Trees (shortlisted for the Macmillan Silver Pen Award in 1997) and Seven Tales of Sex and Death, and a collection of essays on writing and contemporary literature, Writing on the Wall. She is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of Manchester.
'One of the best novels of its year ... It is a thriller, a romance and a critique of dryness ... Ever since I read it, I have been encouraging everyone else to do so' A.S. Byatt (on Hallucinating Foucault) 'Every bit as good as her debut, Hallucinating Foucault, which is saying a good deal ... Penetrating and sparkling' Philip Hensher (on Monsieur Shoushana's Lemon Trees) 'Patricia Duncker should be made a DBE, elected to the Academie Francaise and have a statue erected in the main square of her home town' Louis de Bernieres (on James Miranda Barry)
A mass suicide (or "Departure") of a secret cult's adherents discovered in a French forest on New Year's Day, laid out in a fan shape in the snow, at the start of this haunting novel from British author Duncker (Hallucinating Foucault), resembles a larger Departure years earlier, in Switzerland. Looking into both cases are Dominique Carpentiera, a "judge," or investigator, in the French court system, and Andre Schweigen, a commissaire, or police officer with judicial powers. Complicating matters is the nearly obsessive love that Andre holds for the beautiful and idiosyncratic Dominique. Delving into the history of the cult, Dominique travels extensively, including back to her own roots among the vineyards of France. Along the way she comes to realize that at the center of her search is an ancient book full of strange code and a brilliant German composer named Friedrich Grosz. Though the leisurely plot gets progressively flakier and the personal dynamics a bit tiresome, the prose remains vibrant. (July) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.
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