To the Hermitage - Softcover

Malcolm Bradbury

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330486209 ISBN 13: 9780330486200

Publisher: Picador UK, 2001

Synopsis

In alternating narratives, Bradbury brilliantly recreates the climate of the eighteenth century―as Diderot journeys to Russia at the behest of Catherine the Great for discussions on the nature of the late-18th-century world, as well as the twentieth century academic milieu.

In October 1993, a novelist is invited to go to Stockholm and Russia to take part in what is enigmatically referred to as the Diderot Project. In Stockholm he is joined by various other members of the project―including an academic, a lustful opera singer, and a Swedish diplomat. On the journey to Russia more is revealed about the great Enlightenment writer Denis Diderot―the son of a knife maker in Langres, who went to Paris and compiled the Encyclopedia, a book that changed the world.

About this title

About the Author

Malcolm Bradbury is a novelist, critic, television dramatist and Emeritus Professor of American Studies at the University of East Anglia. He is author of the novels Eating People is Wrong (1959); Stepping Westward (1965); The History Man (1975); which won the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Prize and was adapted as a famous television series; Rates of Exchange (1983) which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Cuts: A Very Short Novel (1987), also televised; and Doctor Criminale (1992). His critical works include The Modern American Novel (1984; revised edition, 1992); No, Not Bloomsbury (essays, 1987); The Modern world: Ten Great Writers (1988); From Puritanism to Post-modernism: A History of American Literature (with Richard Ruland, 1991) He is the author of a collection of seven stories and nine parodies, entitled Who Do You Think You Are? (1976), and of several works of humour and satire, including Why Come to Slaka? (1986), Unsent Letters (1988; revised edition, 1995) and Mensonge (1987). Many of his books are published by Penguin. In addition, he has written many television plays and the television 'novel' The Gravy Train and The Gravy Train Goes East. He has adapted several television series, including Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue, Kinglsey Amis's The Green Man and Stella Gibbon's' Cold Comfort Farm, now a feature film. Malcolm Bradbury lives in Norwich, travels good deal, and in 1991 he was awarded the CBE.

From Publishers Weekly

The late Bradbury (Eating People Is Wrong; Doctor Criminale), a noted teacher and novelist, achieves a striking and effective blend of past and present, literary sleuthing and travelogue in this, his last novel. It weaves two narratives: the first concerns an English professor who goes with a group of fellow academics to St. Petersburg on the Diderot Project (a conference devoted to the great French philosopher and contemporary of Voltaire), just as Yeltsin's countercoup in Moscow is coming to a climax. It is also the wonderfully researched and touching story of how Catherine the Great, ever eager to be thought of as a queen of enlightenment, invited Diderot to her palace, the Hermitage, for daily discussions on the nature of the late-18th-century world. A motley collection of contemporary scholars have their own reasons for their pilgrimage, which is much enlivened by academic bickering and inserted conference papers that venture into beguiling byways of history. The professor encounters an elderly librarian who has spent her life trying to organize the unruly collection of Diderot papers amid the rigors of Soviet life; in her, Bradbury has created a deeply poignant character sketch. The windup of the historical segment is no less delightful, bringing Diderot and Voltaire together and offering the piquant suggestion that the plans for a Russian constitution, which Diderot failed to interest Catherine in, became the basis for our own Constitution. The book is overextended, but it is also lively, thought provoking and, in its portrait of contemporary Russia, vividly chilling. For patient readers of a scholarly inclination and with a liking for the stranger corners of history, this will be a treat; many will unfortunately find the length and density daunting.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador UK
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0330486209
• ISBN 13: 9780330486200
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512