Goldberg

Variations

Josipovici Gabriel

Taking his cue from an anecdote connected with Bach's late masterpiece, the "Goldberg Variations", Gabriel Josipovici imagines an English writer, a Jew, at the turn of the eighteenth century, who is invited to the house of a country gentleman in order to read him to sleep. What follows can be read as a set of disconnected stories on the most varied of topics – incest in the Orkneys, madness in Chester, a poetic competition at the court of George III, a marital quarrel, weaving past and present until it reached its bizarre climax.

Part homage to Bach, part pure fiction and part evocation of echoes from the past – the ghosts of Holderlin, Kierkegaard and many others haunts its pages, this is a book as exciting and thought-provoking as any Josipovici has written, from his Bonnard-inspired "Contre-Jour" to his hilarious dialogue-novel, "Now".

About the Author

Gabriel Josipovici was born in Nice in 1940 of Russo-Italian, Romano-Levantine parents. He lived in Egypt from 1945 to 1956, when he came to Britain. He read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, graduating with a First in 1961. From 1963 to 1998 he taught at the University of Sussex. He is the author of sixteen novels, three volumes of short stories, eight critical works, and numerous stage and radio plays, and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. His plays have been performed throughout Britain and on radio in Britain, France and Germany, and his work has been translated into the major European languages and Arabic. In 2001 he published "A Life", a biographical memoir of his mother, the translator and poet Sacha Rabinovitch (London Magazine editions). His most recent works are "Two Novels: After and Making Mistakes" (Carcanet), "What Ever Happened to Modernism?" (Yale University Press) and "Heart's Wings" (Carcanet, 2010).

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