Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Transcription
Author: ATKINSON KATE
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 17/09/2018
Imprint: DOUBLEDAY
Price: $33.00
Publishing status: Active
Since the 1995 publication of her debut
novel Behind the Scenes in the Museum,
British writer Kate Atkinson has assumed
the status of that very rare creature – a
novelist of literary fiction who can also claim
bestseller status. If you are a fan of her
interlinked novels Life After Life and A God in
Ruins, you’ll also enjoy Transcription, a sortof
spy thriller set in London during and after
WW2. There are big themes and questions
at work here – how actions both personal
and collective always have consequences,
what patriotism really signifies, what makes
a life worthwhile – but Atkinson’s story
of neophyte intelligence operative Juliet
Armstrong and her infiltration of a group of
Nazi sympathisers is far from portentous,
with its author using a wry, almost chatty,
tone and presenting us with a protagonist
who is both flawed and relatable.
‘Think of it as an adventure, Perry had said right at the beginning of all this.And it had seemed like one. A bit of a lark, she had thought. A Girls’ Own adventure.’
In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past for ever.
Ten years later, now a producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.
Transcription is a work of rare depth and texture, a bravura modern novel of extraordinary power, wit and empathy. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of this country’s most exceptional writers.
ISBN: 9780857525895
Dimension: 234mm X 153mm
Pages: 352