Bloomsbury U.K.
Available: 01/20/07
6.02 x 9.16 · 288 pages
978-0-7475-8412-4 CDN $24.95 · pb

The Song before It Is Sung

Justin Cartwright

A stunning new novel from Booker-shortlisted and Whitbread Novel Award-winner Justin Cartwright, The Song Before It Is Sung is an extraordinary story of human frailty, degradation and nobility, spanning Oxford in the nineteen thirties, pre-war Prussia and contemporary Britain.

On July 20th, 1944, Adolf Hitler escaped death by a miracle in a failed bomb. He found the main conspirators and had their executions filmed. Axel, Count von Gottberg, was one of those hanged by Hitler. Sixty years after his death, his old friend Elya Mendel leaves a legacy of papers and letters to a former student, Conrad Senior. With the legacy comes a mysterious duty. Drawn into a web of jealousy, betrayal, passion and terrible misunderstandings, Conrad’s own life and marriage begin to suffer as a result of his obsession with the events of that momentous day in 1944—a fateful day which could have changed the world and ended the war.

“Cartwright has been gaining a formidable literary reputation, and each new book has only added to it.” (Daily Mail)

Justin Cartwright (London) is the author of In Every Face I Meet, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His Leading the Cheers won the Whitbread Novel Award, for which he has been nominated five times. His other awards include a Commonweath Writer’s prize and the South African M-Net award. His novel The Promise of Happiness won the 2005 Hawthornden Prize and the Sunday Times of South Africa Prize.