The Biographer's Tale

A S Byatt

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English

Vintage
01 June 2001

Fiction & Literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Reissued with a beautiful new illustrative cover. How can you describe a 'whole life'? Booker Prize-winner A. S. Byatt conjures a sparking, colour-filled novel about one man's attempt to do so

Phineas G. Nanson, a disenchanted graduate student, decides to immerse himself in the messiness of 'real life' by writing a biography of a great biographer. But a 'whole life' is hard to find. Everywhere he looks he discovers only fragments - strange notes, boxes of marbles, undated postcards.

As Phineas's research continues, his mind roams from the deserts of Africa to the maelstroms of the Arctic. Along the way he meets others building wholes from bits and pieces - taxonomists, ecologists, even travel agents - and begins to puzzle out his future. But who will guide him from the labyrinth and back into his own life?

By: A S Byatt
Imprint: Vintage
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 191g
ISBN: 9780099283935
ISBN 10: 009928393X
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 01 June 2001
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Reviews for The Biographer's Tale

Exhausted by post-structuralist literary theory, Nanson has abandoned his PhD and intends to write a biography of the 'great biographer' Scholes Destry-Scholes instead. So Phineas G Nanson is searching for Scholes Destry-Scholes who is in turn, across two centuries, searching for Elmer Bole. This novel is really Nanson's notebook and it bristles with ideas, and facts, and precise descriptions of things. In the course of his research Nanson progresses around the British Library Reading Room and sits in every seat, reasoning that at some point he will have sat in the same spot at Destry-Scholes. Perhaps he is looking in the wrong places for his subject but Destry-Scholes remains elusive. Meanwhile he is suspended between the cool, self-contained radiographer Vera and the impassioned Fulla who is fighting to document endangered insects before they disappear forever. (Kirkus UK)

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The Biographer's Tale

A S Byatt

$39.99

Paperback

Reviews for The Biographer's Tale

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