[]
The Valley Of Bones
  • Published: 15 May 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099472469
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $24.99

The Valley Of Bones

Formats & editions
Paperback
15 May 2005
EBook
1 Aug 2011
Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

Volume 7 in Anthony Powell's epic masterwork ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’, universally acknowledged as one of the great feats of 20th century English literature. Now in the first volume’s 75th anniversary year, this twelve-volume series is ready to delight and entrance a new generation of readers.

‘He is, as Proust was before him, the great chronicler of his culture in his time.’ Guardian

‘Astonishingly accurate, not just the comedies of incongruity but the gathering menace of the real war beyond.’ Financial Times

‘A sheer delight.’ Observer

‘A Dance to the Music of Time’ is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. Now in the first volume’s 75th anniversary year, this twelve-volume series is ready to delight and entrance a new generation of readers.

In this seventh volume, Britain once again finds itself plunged into global war. Called to do his duty, Nick Jenkins must leave his pregnant wife, Isobel, and his life in London to take up his position as a Second Lieutenant in the Welsh infantry. Grappling with endless regulations and the tedious routines of military life, it is not long before he finds himself in the middle of a dispute between his commanding officer, Captain Gwatkin, and Lieutenant Bithel.

Finding himself stationed in Northern Ireland, military life is not what it had seemed, and Nick finds himself longing for the comforts of home. But when the battalion is transferred to an unknown location, Nick is reunited with a familiar face.

Praise for 'A Dance to the Music of Time’
‘A world as rich as Joyce's on the one hand and P. G. Wodehouse’s on the other.’ Guardian
‘One of the great novel-sequences in English Literature.’ William Boyd
‘One of the greatest pleasures of my reading life.’ Michael Palin
‘An epic, elegant masterpiece.’ Lauren Groff
‘A joyous experience.’ Roddy Doyle
‘An intricately wrought work of art.’ John Banville
‘The finest long comic novel that England has produced.’ Anthony Burgess
‘Mr Powell’s imagination is inexhaustible.’ Evelyn Waugh
‘One of English fiction’s few twentieth-century masterpieces.’ London Review of Books
‘There is no other novelist whose work gives so much or such consistent pleasure.’ Times Literary Supplement
  • Published: 15 May 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099472469
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

About the author

Anthony Powell

Anthony Powell was an only child, born in 1905. As a young man he worked for a crumbling publishing business whilst trying to find time to write novels. He moved in a bohemian world of struggling writers and artists, which was to provide the raw material for much of his fiction. During the Second World War he served in Military Intelligence Liaison. He subsequently became a fiction reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and for five years he was the literary editor of the now-defunct magazine Punch. Meanwhile he continued to work on the twelve-novel sequence ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’. He was the author of seven other novels, and four volumes of memoirs. His many reviews for the Daily Telegraph are also published in collected volumes. Anthony Powell died in March 2000.
AP

Also by Anthony Powell

To Keep The Ball Rolling
Agents And Patients
Journals 1990-1992
Temporary Kings
Hearing Secret Harmonies
The Soldier's Art
The Military Philosophers
See all

Praise for The Valley Of Bones

I would rather read Mr. Powell than any English novelist now writing

Kingsley Amis

He has wit, style, and panache, in a world where those qualities are in permanently short supply

The New York Review of Books

Incalculably brilliant

TIME Magazine

[A] comic masterpiece

Irish Times

Comic, satisfying, thought-provoking, addictive

The Telegraph

One of the great novel-sequences in English Literature – a wonderful portrait of society, full of insight into the complexities of human behaviour, richly detailed and shrewdly funny.

William Boyd

Discovering Anthony Powell’s "A Dance to the Music of Time" has been one of the greatest pleasures of my reading life. The cool elegance of the prose, the deliciously dry humour, the confident choreography of his characters made for an incomparable treat. Twelve volumes was simply not enough.

Michael Palin

"A Dance To The Music of Time" is an epic, elegant masterpiece, so full of lightness and comedy that you're unprepared for how it quietly wrecks your heart.

Lauren Groff

Powell’s novel sequence is at once a rich chronicle of 20th-century English social life and an intricately wrought work of art. It is also extremely funny, in its sly fashion.

John Banville

A masterful stylist and a wise, often hilarious observer of human nature and his times, Anthony Powell is an under-appreciated literary gem. The pleasures and dramas of the "Dance" continue to illuminate daily life.

Claire Messud

I re-read the "Dance" every five years or so and always find something new – the world has changed but the characters are evergreen. Everybody has a Widmerpool in their life.

Daisy Goodwin

Reading "A Dance to the Music of Time" was such a joyous experience, I remember wishing there'd been more than twelve volumes.

Roddy Doyle

The novels of Powell’s "A Dance to the Music of Time" themselves move hand in hand in intricate measure through the last century, bearing wisdom and understanding for the present. In an ever-quicker, ever-shallower world, his steadiness and wit reliably escort the reader into depth and patience. Nobody gives pattern to the spectacle of human existence like Powell.

Louisa Young

It's his supreme skill in mastering a lengthily interwoven chronicle, the evolution of such a range and variety of pin-point characters, the wit and the cultural ambition that give the novel a unique place in English Literature.

Melvyn Bragg
penguin pop image
penguin pop image