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Dancer

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About this listen

Bloomsbury presents Dancer by Colum McCann, read by Dion Graham.

Remarkable ... nimble, lyrical and wispy' Sunday Times
'An utterly riveting, frequently moving, and staggeringly well-written book' Daily Mail
'Breathtaking' Guardian
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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.

©2003 Colum McCann (P)2021 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Russia
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I love Colum McCann’s writing. I found the narration very difficult for two reasons: the narrator had a very hoarse voice, which grated; and the story was written in many different voices, all of which were read in the same way making it hard to work out who was speaking at any given time.

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A fabulous ‘biography’ very well set in its own era both politically and socially and narrated by the author. Truly authentic.

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