Painter of Silence - Hardcover

Georgina Harding

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408821125 ISBN 13: 9781408821121

Publisher: Bloomsbury UK, 2012

Synopsis

LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2012 When she leaves the ward she feels the whiteness of the room still inside her, as if she is bleached out inside. It is the shock, she tells herself. She feels the whiteness like a dam holding back all the coloured flood of memory. Iasi, Romania, the early 1950s. A man is found on the steps of a hospital, frail as a fallen bird. He carries no identification and utters no words, and it is days before anyone discovers that he is deaf and mute. And then a young nurse called Safta brings paper and pencils with which he can draw. Slowly, painstakingly, memories appear on the page: a hillside, a stable, a car, a country house, dogs and mirrored rooms and samovars in what is now a lost world. The memories are Safta's also. For the man is Augustin, son of the cook at the manor at Poiana that was her family home. Born six months apart, they grew up with a connection that bypassed words. But while Augustin's world remained the same size Safta's exp

About this title

About the Author

Georgina Harding is the author of two novels: The Solitude of Thomas Cave and The Spy Game, a BBC Book at Bedtime and shortlisted for the Encore Award. Her first book was a word of non-fiction, In Another Europe, recording a journey she made across Romania in 1988 during the worst times of the Ceausescu regime. It was followed by Tranquebar: A Season in South India, which documented the lives of the people in a small fishing village on the Coromandel coast. Georgina Harding lives in London and on a farm in the Stour Valley, Essex.

Review

Georgina Harding conjures a tale that recalls vintage Michael Ondaatje ... A novel about the passage of time, the senselessness of war, and the need to find and preserve meaning, this is a richly satisfying read * Daily Mail * I loved Painter of Silence. It was like entering a dream world that became more and more real, until I actually needed to get back to it. Her writing is so gentle and beautiful and takes you so confidently on a journey. I let myself be carried away. Heaven * Esther Freud * Painter of Silence has recently been longlisted for the Orange Prize, an accolade it richly deserves ... Exquisite ... Her deceptively simple prose gives a startling beauty to the ordinary, and evokes great depth of suffering * Guardian * Harding's prose is a quiet storm of imagery and emotions ... The rubble and ruin of post-war Romania is tenderly rendered ... it's a heartrending predicament expertly realised. Painter of Silence is further testament to a talent gradually sculpting an impressive body of work. It proves as smooth and serene as a slow incoming tide; the story washing over the pages until the reader is immersed in its depths. This is fiction of the most graceful kind * Independent * A must-read ... Hauntingly beautiful, for fans of The English Patient -- Viv Groskop * Red *

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1408821125
• ISBN 13: 9781408821121
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320