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  • Published: 21 May 2020
  • ISBN: 9780099268550
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $26.00

Music & Silence




Now reissued with a stunning new jacket look, Music & Silence is a story of love and divided loyalties set in seventeenth century Denmark

'The best thing from Denmark since Hamlet.' John Julius Norwich

In the year 1629, a young English lutenist named Peter Claire arrives at the Danish Court to join King Christian IV's Royal Orchestra. From the moment when he realises that the musicians perform in a freezing cellar underneath the royal apartments, Peter Claire understands that he's come to a place where the opposing states of light and dark, good and evil, are waging war to the death.

Designated the King's 'Angel' because of his good looks, he finds himself falling in love with the young woman who is the companion of the King's adulterous and estranged wife, Kirsten. With his loyalties fatally divided between duty and passion, how can Peter Claire find the path that will realise his hopes and save his soul?

'The best historical novelist of her generation. She evokes the past with sensuality, wit and superb sleights of hand... The plot is ingenious...an unforgettable tapestry of Eros and art.' A. N. Wilson

  • Published: 21 May 2020
  • ISBN: 9780099268550
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $26.00

About the author

Rose Tremain

Rose Tremain’s novels and short stories have been published in thirty countries and have won many awards, including the Orange Prize (The Road Home), the Dylan Thomas Award (The Colonel's Daughter and Other Stories), the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music & Silence) and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Sacred Country). Her most recent novel, The Gustav Sonata, was a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller. It won the National Jewish Book Award in the US, the South Bank Sky Arts Award in the UK and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award. Rose Tremain was made a CBE in 2007 and a Dame in 2020. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer, Richard Holmes.

www.rosetremain.co.uk

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Praise for Music & Silence

Tremain weaves her web of stories with great visual flair and emotional acuity: This is a fabulous cacophony of passion and despair

Metro

The best thing from Denmark since Hamlet.

John Julius Norwich

Intricate and sparkling ... Ingenious, amusing and beautifully written

Observer

A superb novel... a wonderful, joyously noisy book

Guardian

Tremain's achievement in Music & Silence is extraordinary ... A narrative as funny as it is compelling

Daily Telegraph

The plot is ingenious... an unforgettable tapestry of Eros and of art

Evening Standard

A magnificent novel... a brilliant book which will repay many readings

The Times

Lyrical, voluptuous... splendid... A sumptuous drama lit by the glamorous torchlight of the courtly past

Sunday Times

She is the best historical novelist of her generation. She evokes the past with sensuality, wit and superb sleights of hand... The plot is ingenious...an unforgettable tapestry of Eros and of art

A. N. Wilson