The Beginning of Spring

By Penelope Fitzgerald,

Book cover of The Beginning of Spring

Book description

From the Booker Prize-winning author of ā€˜Offshoreā€™, ā€˜The Blue Flowerā€™ and ā€˜Innocenceā€™ comes this Booker Prize-shortlisted tale of a troubled Moscow printworks .


Frank Reid had been born and brought up in Moscow. His father had emigrated there in the 1870s and started a print-works which, by 1913, had shrunkā€¦

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Beginning of Spring as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Set in Moscow on the eve of the Russian Revolution, this novelā€™s plot does not scream ā€œfunny,ā€ but itā€™s one of the most deeply funny books Iā€™ve ever read.

An English printer living in Russia wakes up one day to find that his wife has left him and taken their children away, and revolutionaries have broken into his shop to print manifestoes.

From this unlikely setup, Fitzgerald spins a hilarious tale of loss, love, and redemption.

From Mark's list on witty historical novels.

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Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect voice. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: ā€œAre his love songs closer to heaven than dying?ā€ Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard itā€¦

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