|
The Song Before It Is Sung: A Novel | 
| Author: Justin Cartwright
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $15.99
Buy New: $6.50
You Save: $9.49 (59%)
New (31) Used (9) Collectible (1) from $6.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 230213
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 1596912693
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781596912694
ASIN: 1596912693
Publication Date: June 24, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: NEW, FIRST EDITION, COVER IN NEW CONDITION, PAGES ARE CLEAN, COULD BE GIVEN AS A GIFT , FIRST EDITION
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
From the Booker Prize nominee and Whitbread Prize winner, a sweeping novel about the nature of human freedom and human passion that received glowing praise in hardcover.
On July 20, 1944, Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. He found the main conspirators and had them hanged from meat hooks. Axel, Count von Gottberg, was one of those hanged by Hitler. Sixty years later, Conrad Senior, a former student of one of Axel’s most trusted friends, is left some of his personal papers and is immediately drawn into a web of jealousy, passion, and betrayal. The more he scrambles to uncover the truth, the more complex he finds the relationship between the two friends.
Wonderfully written—and based on true events—The Song Before It is Sung is a novel of profound and sensitive insight into the human condition, surpassing all of Cartwright’s previous works in its scope and ambition.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 A Model as to how to do historical fiction September 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is just an outstanding novel, well written, based on solid research, and reflective of a high degree of narrative skill by the author. Fiction based upon actual events and real folks is a difficult thing to write well, because the reader can be left in confusion as to what is truth and what is fiction. Skillfully melding the two into an effective whole is a goal not often met--but it surely is here. The central element of the story is the relationship between a character that is based on the Oxford don Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) and a German Rhodes Scholar during the 1930's, who in actuality was Adam Von Trott. The author has given them different names, for reasons that elude me, but has a note in the back explaining all this. The dynamic of their relationship was that Von Trott returned to Nazi Germany and wrote a letter to a British newspaper which some, including Berlin, thought was trying to dispel any contention that Jews were being mishandled in the German courts. Estrangement from his British friends, including Berlin in particular, resulted.
Later Von Trott, then employed in the German foreign ministry, participates with Count Von Stauffenberg (soon to be portrayed by Tom Cruise in the forthcoming "Valkyrie") in the 1944 plot to assasinate Hitler, which of course fails, and he and the other conspirators are executed. The author is particularly careful in his handling of this episode to structure it in accordance with the published accounts we have of this important episode. The central theme of the novel is that Berlin leaves his papers relating to Von Trott to a later student of his, to organize and publish. The novel recounts his efforts to do further research and reconstruct the dimensions of this relationship. This is all fine; unfortunately the author has included a subplot about the central character and his wife who are having marital difficulties, which I think hampers (but not too badly) the flow of the novel.
One can check the novel against the facts as known. For example, in the recent collection of Berlin letters, "Flourishing: 1928-1946" (also reviewed on Amazon) there are not only letters between the two, but a picture of Von Trott, as well as an account which Berlin wrote as a tribute to him in 1986, on the fortieth anniversary of his execution. The author has treated this painful episode in Berlin's life with sensitivity, and out of it has spun a great novel that is just a pleasure to read.
 Beautifully imagined historical fiction March 11, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The novel is, at its core , a beautifully imagined take on the life of Adam von Trott, one of the July 20th plotters against Hitler. Von Trott exemplifies personal bravery, patriotism and commitment. While von Trott's patriotism and mystical inclination leads to a certain amount of self delusion, his involvement in the plot makes complete sense, even if he may have fooled himself into overstating the likely benefits of success. The novel is also an account of von Trott's friendship with Isaiah Berlin, but this is far less successful, principally because the Berlin of the novel is such an ordinary person, regardless of his intellectual attainments.
The account is supposedly written by a former student of Berlin, Conrad Senior, to whom Berlin leaves his papers relating to von Trott and their friendship. At various times in the novel Senior asks himself what Berlin hopes he will accomplish with this material, and comes up with various answers, but I believe the true answer is obvious: Berlin hopes that von Trott will receive his due.
The writing is quite good, and I also enjoyed the relationship between Conrad and his wife. The wife is most definitely sympathetic even as she ends their marriage.
Loved this novel February 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It may stray somewhat from history, but it is a novel, and despite not adhering strictly to the facts of the friendship between Berlin and Von Trott, The Song Before it is Sung offers a very moving, unusual take on German nationalism during WW2. Beautifully written, engaging and worth owning.
"Where is the song before it is sung?" October 27, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
"Where is the song before it is sung?"
Justin Cartwright, in THE SONG BEFORE IT IS SUNG, argues, "Nowhere is the answer. One creates a song by singing it, by composing it." He expands his scope: "So, too, life is created by those who live it step by step."
In other words, does a human being make his own fate? Or do the constraints of his character and forces greater than himself constrain and even dictate his destiny?
THE SONG BEFORE IT IS SUNG would try to convince us that life is, quite starkly and unrelentingly, what it is and nothing more...that it has no meaning beyond just being. Yet, it protests too much. And it offers a character study -- that of "Axel, Count von Gottberg, a noble son of Mecklenburg and a true patriot" -- that challenges this hypothesis.
Von Gottberg is a fictional representation of a real German, Adam von Trott, whom Hitler had executed for collaboration in the famous and failed assassination plot at "Wolf's Lair" in Rastenburg, Prussia. Von Trott was friends with Isaiah Berlin. They hit a strained period when von Trott wrote a letter to an English newspaper in 1934 claiming anti-Semitism did not exist in the courts in Hesse where he lawyered. According to later assertions by mutual friends, as early as 1935 Berlin accepted von Trott's regret over the letter, and their friendship resumed.
In THE SONG BEFORE IT WAS SUNG, however, Berlin's fictional alter ego, Elya Mendel, is a less understanding man. He considers von Gottberg's letter evidence that the Count is a Nazi, whether von Gottberg admits it or not. Mendel and another Jewish friend write to U.S. Supreme Court Justice "Hamburger" (alias for actual Justice Frankfurter) to warn that diplomat von Gottberg should not be trusted or assisted when he seeks support in Washington D.C. for a negotiated peace.
Mendel, a scholar who remained in Oxford after he and von Gottberg were young students there together, is a man dedicated to ideas. He is a secular, insular man who believes unshakably that nothing von Gottberg can do will (or should) change the course of the war. Mendel demands abject surrender from Germany, and he sees clearly that the British and American politicians share this goal. He does, several times, urge von Gottberg to flee Germany, convinced that the German will lose his life one way or the other by staying. Despite this concern, Mendel vacillates over what he thinks von Gottberg's truest, deepest motivations might be. He isn't sure von Gottberg knows himself.
But Hegelian von Gottberg harbors no such doubts about himself. He is a man whose character and upbringing as a member of the German aristocracy propel him to serve the "secret" the "sacred" Germany that yearns for a dignified existence sans Hitler and his clique. He is a man of action who cannot leave Germany to its own devices. He sees himself and Germans of like mind (such as Colonel von Stauffenberg, who actually placed the bomb in "Wolf's Lair") as servants and saviors chosen by destiny, by providence, by the spirit of his homeland. He will not heed Mendel's rational pleadings because he is driven by Something Greater -- a Teutonic, arguably mystical, bond with his people and his country. In 1944, the 35-yer-old Count (along with many co-conspirators) pays the ultimate price for his commitment and his principles.
The book's chief narrator, Conrad Senior, is a present-day dreamer to whom Mendel, in old age, bequethed his papers. Senior is obsessed with von Gottberg's gruesome death, and with clarifying the circumstances of the Mendel/von Gottberg rift. His own life is a shambles, and he struggles to make sense of both bygone times and the press of Now...which is still being impacted by the past.
THE SONG BEFORE IT IS SUNG, then, is a historical novel that doesn't entirely adhere to known facts. It is however, a beautifully evoked, sometimes haunting, rumination on friendship, sexuality as basic impetus, convictions, and love. Also on the value of patriotism in its various shades, relations between Germans and Jews...and men and women, and whether life operates transparently or via forces beyond individual control. Ambiguously, the novel's thesis that people create their own fate is both proven and disproven. The irony highlights the rich complexity of our human existence.
[Here are two links for readers who would like further historical perspective and commentary on the book:
http://www.newstatesman.com/200703120045
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/599 ]
Wonderfully reviewed, gripping, nove. September 26, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Wonderful book, justly praised as a masterpiece by LA Times and amazing
by National Post. Do read this. It's about the War and two friends, one German one English. Utterly moving and convincing, on love, patriotism,
the war, and about obsession. How can anyone write a novel this good and
not be totally famous? Please, please give yourself a treat, as the Wall St Journal said.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
