War and Turpentine
Read by
Nicholas Guy Smith
Release:
08/09/2016
Release:
08/09/2016
Runtime:
11h 54m
Unabridged
Quantity:
“It is part the author’s memoir and part a novelization of the grandfather’s memoir—all ably narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith….As a narrator, Smith doesn’t oversell the changes of age but, rather, hints at them. He also allows the author to tell us who is speaking rather than creating distracting voices for the various people in the two men’s lives.
AudioFile
Longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize
An Economist Best Book of 2016
A New York Times Top 10 Book of 2016
Among longlisted titles for Man Booker International Prize, 2017
Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017
A New York Times Top 10 Best Book of the Year
An Economist Best Book of the Year
The life of Urbain Martien—artist, soldier, survivor of World War I—lies contained in two notebooks he left behind when he died in 1981. In War and Turpentine, his grandson, a writer, retells his grandfather’s story, the notebooks providing a key to the locked chambers of Urbain’s memory.
With vivid detail, the grandson recounts a whole life: Urbain as the child of a lowly church painter, retouching his father’s work;dodging death in a foundry; fighting in the war that altered the course of history; marrying the sister of the woman he truly loved; being haunted by an ever-present reminder of the artist he had hoped to be and the soldier he was forced to become. Wrestling with this tale, the grandson straddles past and present, searching for a way to understand his own part in both. As artfully rendered as a Renaissance fresco, War and Turpentine paints an extraordinary portrait of one man’s life and reveals how that life echoed down through the generations.
(With black-and-white illustrations throughout)
A New York Times Top 10 Best Book of the Year
An Economist Best Book of the Year
The life of Urbain Martien—artist, soldier, survivor of World War I—lies contained in two notebooks he left behind when he died in 1981. In War and Turpentine, his grandson, a writer, retells his grandfather’s story, the notebooks providing a key to the locked chambers of Urbain’s memory.
With vivid detail, the grandson recounts a whole life: Urbain as the child of a lowly church painter, retouching his father’s work;dodging death in a foundry; fighting in the war that altered the course of history; marrying the sister of the woman he truly loved; being haunted by an ever-present reminder of the artist he had hoped to be and the soldier he was forced to become. Wrestling with this tale, the grandson straddles past and present, searching for a way to understand his own part in both. As artfully rendered as a Renaissance fresco, War and Turpentine paints an extraordinary portrait of one man’s life and reveals how that life echoed down through the generations.
(With black-and-white illustrations throughout)
Release:
2016-08-09
2016-08-09
Runtime:
Runtime:
11h 54m
11h 54m
Format:
audio
audio
Weight:
0.0 lb
0.0 lb
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780735209213
Publisher:
Penguin Random House
Penguin Random House
Praise