This novel opens on a battlefield: trudging back from the front through a ravaged and icy wasteland, their horses dying around them, their own hunger rendering them almost savage, the Russian soldiers are exhausted as they reach the city of Ufa, desperate for food and shelter. They find both, and then music and dance. And there, spinning unafraid among them, dancing for the soldiers and anyone else who'll watch him, is one small pale boy, Rudolf.
This is Colum McCann's dancer: Rudolf, a prodigy at six years old, who became the greatest dancer of the century, who redefined dance, rewrote his own life, and died of AIDS before anyone knew he had it.
This is an extraordinary life transformed into extraordinary fiction by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation. One kind of masculine grace is perfectly matched to another in Colum McCann's beautiful and daring new novel.
About the Author
Colum McCann, originally from Dublin, Ireland, is the author of six novels and two collections of stories. His most recent novel, the New York Times bestseller Let the Great World Spin, won the National Book Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and several other major international awards. His fiction has been published in thirty-five languages. He lives in New York.
Industry Reviews
“The theme of towering celebrity and its attendant vacuity is very well done”
Chris Power, The Times
“McCann's remarkable novel … McCann's prose – nimble, lyrical and wispy – does full justice to the tragic story of a dancer who was the glory of his generation”
Sunday Times
“It's a strikingly original book, and as apparently effortless as one of Fonteyn's pirouettes or Nureyev's leaps into space”
Irish Times
“An utterly riveting, frequently moving, and staggeringly well-written book”
Wendy Holden, Daily Mail
