Us Conductors

Author: Sean Michaels

Stock information

General Fields

  • : 33.00 NZD
  • : 9781408868676
  • : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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  • : July 2015
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : 32.99
  • : July 2015
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • :
  • : Sean Michaels
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  • : Paperback
  • : Export/Airside ed
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  • : 368
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Barcode 9781408868676
9781408868676

Description

'I come from Leningrad. With my bare hands, I have killed one man. I was born on August 15, 1896, and at that instant I became an object moving through space toward you...' Locked in a cabin, on a ship bound for Leningrad, Lev Termen types a letter to Clara, his 'one true love' and remembers his early years as a brilliant young scientist. Inventor of the ethereal, musical theremin, Termen performed in the gilded concert halls of Russia and Europe to rapturous applause. The toast of the Soviet Union, he was sent to New York with a plan to infiltrate capitalism itself, to win its heart and capture its secrets. But instead, Manhattan infiltrates Termen and in the city of dreams he rubs shoulders with Gershwin and Rachmaninoff, the Rockefellers and the Astors, Charlie Chaplin and Glenn Miller, and dances night after night with the beautiful young violinist Clara Rockmore. But when his spy games fall apart and he is forced to return home, he finds the Motherland not quite as he left it. Exiled to a Siberian Gulag, with nothing but his wits to keep him alive, Termen is drawn ever deeper into the labyrinth of Stalin's Russia, where only his feelings for Clara, passing through the ether like the theremin's song, seem to show a way out.

Promotion info

Winner of Canada's Booker, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Us Conductors is a hauntingly beautiful novel of longing and electricity that tells the true story of Russian inventor and spy Lev Thermen

Reviews

The grace of Michaels's style makes these times and places seem entirely new. He succeeds at one of the hardest things a writer can do: he makes music seem to sing from the pages of a novel Giller Prize jury (Shauna Singh Baldwin, Justin Cartwright and Francine Prose) Told with grace and confidence, and in a finely wrought voice, Us Conductors kept surprising me to the end Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow Child Turns out Sean Michaels might not be able to play the theremin, but he can record the noise of the human heart Glasgow Herald Michaels has a natural gift for bringing us to a time and place which allows the suspension of belief and lets you walk every step of the way with him The Globe and Mail

Author description

Montreal's Sean Michaels is a writer, critic and founder of the pioneering music blog 'Said the Gramophone'. Born in Stirling, Scotland, in 1982, he has toured with rock bands, scoured the Paris catacombs and contributed to publications including the Guardian, McSweeney's, Pitchfork and Plan B. @stgramophone usconductors.byseanmichaels.com