
Human Voices
Penelope Fitzgerald(Author)
Harper Paperbacks (Publisher)
Published on 4. August 2015
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-0-544-48408-5 (ISBN)
Description
"A wonderful combination of deadpan English comedy and surreal farce." - A. S. Byatt "A tribute to the unsung and quintessentially English heroism of imperfect people." - New Criterion
When British listeners tuned in to the BBC's Nine O'Clock News in the middle of 1940, they had no idea what human dramas-and follies-were unfolding behind the scenes. Targeted by enemy bombers, the BBC had turned its concert hall into a dormitory for both sexes, and personal chaos rivaled the political. Amidst the bombs and broadcasts two program directors fight for power while their younger female assistants fall prey to affairs, abandonment, and unrequited love. Reading this intimate glimpse behind the scenes of the BBC in its heyday, "one is left with the sensation," William Boyd wrote in London Magazine, "that this is what it was really like."
This new edition features an introduction by Mark Damazer, along with new cover art.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
183 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-544-48408-5 (9780544484085)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
PENELOPE FITZGERALD wrote many books small in size but enormous in popular and critical acclaim over the past two decades. Over 300,000 copies of her novels are in print, and profiles of her life appeared in both The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. In 1979, her novel Offshore won Britain's Booker Prize, and in 1998 she won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for The Blue Flower. Though Fitzgerald embarked on her literary career when she was in her 60's, her career was praised as "the best argument ... for a publishing debut made late in life" (New York Times Book Review). She told the New York Times Magazine, "In all that time, I could have written books and I didn’t. I think you can write at any time of your life." Dinitia Smith, in her New York Times Obituary of May 3, 2000, quoted Penelope Fitzgerald from 1998 as saying, "I have remained true to my deepest convictions, I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?"