The Melody

Strange, unsettling, brilliant … one of our most original and inventive novelists * Observer *Seductively atmospheric … deeply moving * Daily Mail *Takes its place among his finest [novels] … grippingly symbolic and intensely real * Guardian *Hypnotic and powerful … enchanting and disconcerting * Irish Times *The Melody is at its most poignant on the subject of growing old … every sentence is packed with Crace’s characteristic lyricism * The Times *Jim Crace writes with great flair and inimitable imagination … The Melody is lyrical and tender … one of Britain’s most distinctive and accomplished novelists * Financial Times *Ambitious, powerful * Big Issue *Exquisite … another choice example of this twice-Booker-nominated English writer’s unique gift * National *A powerful novel about music, human nature and poverty … only Kazuo Ishiguro rivals Crace’s range in terms of emotional power and unusual subject matter * Financial Times *The book retains a lingering power – Anthony Cummins * Observer *Impeccably wrought * TLS *Terrific … part political allegory, part dream and part deeply tender meditation on grief * Metro *As touching as a well-made melody * Daily Telegraph *

Jim Crace is the prize-winning author of eleven books, including Continent (winner of the 1986 Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize), Quarantine (winner of the 1998 Whitbread Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the Booker Prize) and Being Dead (winner of the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award). His 2013 novel, Harvest, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.