Book Description
すばらしい想像力に満ちて、読まずにはいられない。ジュリアン・バーンズの新作『Arthur & George』は、遊び心とペーソスと英知に満ちた素晴らしい小説だ。
アーサーとジョージ。この二人の人生が交わることになろうとは、誰が想像するだろう。19世紀、斜陽のエジンバラで育ったアーサーは、恥ずべく父と守るべく母を抱え、人生に駆り立てられている。思いがけず作家として成功を収め富と名声を手にした彼は、世間にはすっかり立派な英国紳士として見なされるようになった。
ジョージはといえば救いようのないアウトサイダーで、そのような紳士になる見込みはない。スタフォードシャーの田舎に牧師の息子として育ち、粘り強く論理的ではあるが変わっていて、少年時代、家族は中傷の対象となっていた。法の信頼性に安全を求めたジョージは、成長後、英国司法に絶対価値をおく事務弁護士となった。
やがてある危機が、二人の男の人生の不安定なバランスを崩す。アーサーは自責の念や卑しい感情に狼狽する。ジョージは恐ろしい犯罪に問われるという大きな試練に見舞われる。そしてこの時から二人の人生は意外な深いところで交わり始め、互いが互いの救いとなっていく。
『Arthur & George』は卑劣な犯罪と高貴な精神、罪悪感と潔白、またアイデンティティ、ナショナリティや民族を巧みに描いた小説である。しかしそれは何にも増して、私たち人間が知り、信じ、証明するものが宿命的に違うことについて、機知を働かせ深く熟考した作品といえよう。 --このテキストは、 ハードカバー 版に関連付けられています。
アーサーとジョージ。この二人の人生が交わることになろうとは、誰が想像するだろう。19世紀、斜陽のエジンバラで育ったアーサーは、恥ずべく父と守るべく母を抱え、人生に駆り立てられている。思いがけず作家として成功を収め富と名声を手にした彼は、世間にはすっかり立派な英国紳士として見なされるようになった。
ジョージはといえば救いようのないアウトサイダーで、そのような紳士になる見込みはない。スタフォードシャーの田舎に牧師の息子として育ち、粘り強く論理的ではあるが変わっていて、少年時代、家族は中傷の対象となっていた。法の信頼性に安全を求めたジョージは、成長後、英国司法に絶対価値をおく事務弁護士となった。
やがてある危機が、二人の男の人生の不安定なバランスを崩す。アーサーは自責の念や卑しい感情に狼狽する。ジョージは恐ろしい犯罪に問われるという大きな試練に見舞われる。そしてこの時から二人の人生は意外な深いところで交わり始め、互いが互いの救いとなっていく。
『Arthur & George』は卑劣な犯罪と高貴な精神、罪悪感と潔白、またアイデンティティ、ナショナリティや民族を巧みに描いた小説である。しかしそれは何にも増して、私たち人間が知り、信じ、証明するものが宿命的に違うことについて、機知を働かせ深く熟考した作品といえよう。 --このテキストは、 ハードカバー 版に関連付けられています。
内容説明
Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011. Arthur and George grow up worlds and miles apart in late nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, and then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, George remains in hardworking obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events which made sensational headlines at the time as The Great Wyrley Outrages. With a mixture of detailed research and vivid imagination, Julian Barnes brings to life not just this long-forgotten case, but the inner workings of these two very different men. This is a novel in which the events of a hundred years ago constantly set off contemporary echoes, a novel about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race. Most of all it is a profound and moving meditation on the fateful difference between what we believe, what we know and what we can prove.
Book Description
Brilliantly imagined and irresistibly readable, Arthur & George is a major new novel from Julian Barnes, a wonderful combination of playfulness, pathos and wisdom.
Searching for clues, no one would ever guess that the lives of Arthur and George might intersect. Growing up in shabby-genteel nineteenth-century Edinburgh, Arthur is saddled with a dad who is a disgrace and a mum he wishes to protect, and is propelled into a life of action. To his astonishment, his career as a self-made man of letters brings him riches and fame and, in the world at large, he becomes the perfect picture of the honourable English gentlemen.
George is irredeemably an outsider, and has no hope of becoming such a picture. Though he’s dogged and logical, a vicar’s son from rural Staffordshire, he is set apart, and he and his family are targeted in his boyhood by a poison-pen campaign. George finds safe harbour in the reliability of rules, and grows up to become a solicitor, putting his faith in the insulating value of British justice.
Then crisis upsets the uneasy equilibrium of both men’s lives. Arthur is knocked for a loop by guilt and other dishonourable emotions. George is put to the sorest test, accused of a horrible crime. And from that point on their lives weave together in the most profound and surprising way, as each man becomes the other’s salvation.
Arthur & George is a masterful novel about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race. Most of all, it’s a profound and witty meditation on the fateful differences between what we believe, what we know and what we can prove. --このテキストは、 ハードカバー 版に関連付けられています。
Searching for clues, no one would ever guess that the lives of Arthur and George might intersect. Growing up in shabby-genteel nineteenth-century Edinburgh, Arthur is saddled with a dad who is a disgrace and a mum he wishes to protect, and is propelled into a life of action. To his astonishment, his career as a self-made man of letters brings him riches and fame and, in the world at large, he becomes the perfect picture of the honourable English gentlemen.
George is irredeemably an outsider, and has no hope of becoming such a picture. Though he’s dogged and logical, a vicar’s son from rural Staffordshire, he is set apart, and he and his family are targeted in his boyhood by a poison-pen campaign. George finds safe harbour in the reliability of rules, and grows up to become a solicitor, putting his faith in the insulating value of British justice.
Then crisis upsets the uneasy equilibrium of both men’s lives. Arthur is knocked for a loop by guilt and other dishonourable emotions. George is put to the sorest test, accused of a horrible crime. And from that point on their lives weave together in the most profound and surprising way, as each man becomes the other’s salvation.
Arthur & George is a masterful novel about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race. Most of all, it’s a profound and witty meditation on the fateful differences between what we believe, what we know and what we can prove. --このテキストは、 ハードカバー 版に関連付けられています。
著者について
Julian Barnes is the author of eleven novels, including The Sense of an Ending, Metroland, Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in 10 Chapters and Arthur & George; three books of short stories, Cross Channel, The Lemon Table and Pulse; and also three collections of journalism, Letters from London, Something to Declare, and The Pedant in the Kitchen. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. In France he is the only writer to have won both the Prix Medicis (for Flaubert's Parrot) and the Prix Femina (for Talking it Over). He was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2004, the David Cohen Prize for Literature and the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2011. He lives in London.
