The Conductor (41 page)
I would like to acknowledge W.W. Norton & Company for permission to quote from the poem ‘As if through a straw, you drink my soul’ in
Anna Akhmatova: Poems
, selected and translated by Lyn Coffin, 1983.
I am grateful to the following people for their help in varying ways, including general advice and support, close readings of the manuscript and the invaluable offer of quiet writing space: Harriet Allan, Jill Foulston, Sarah Lees-Jeffries, Rachel Paine and Rob Wilson, Jane Parkin, Sebastian Schrade, Dulcie Smart, Jon Stallworthy, John Wilson, and Antoinette Wilson. Many thanks as ever to my agent Simon Trewin, and also to Iris Tupholme and the team at HarperCollins Canada for their professionalism and enthusiasm with this edition.
Special thanks to Margaret Quigley and Gustav Hellberg for their constant support and encouragement.
SARAH QUIGLEY is a writer, poet and reviewer. She has a DPhil in literature from the University of Oxford, and her work has been widely published in New Zealand, the U.K., the U.S. and Germany. The winner of several highprofile awards for her fiction, Sarah Quigley was the inaugural recipient of the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers’ Residency. She now lives in Berlin. Visit her online at www.sarahvquigley.com.
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A
lthough this novel is based on real events, the majority of its characters and incidents are fictional. In some instances (such as Karl Eliasberg and Nina Bronnikova), where little documentation exists, I have retained real names but have largely fictionalised backgrounds and personalities. I have slightly altered a few facts for dramatic purposes.
In recent decades, conflicting views have arisen relating to the programmatic interpretation of Shostakovich’s
Seventh Symphony
. I have chosen to depict the work as a direct response to the invasion of Leningrad for purely novelistic reasons.
In most cases I have used Anglicised versions of Russian names and place names. I have also simplified the complicated Russian method of personal address; characters are usually referred to by one name only, regardless of their relationship to the speaker.
The Conductor
Copyright © 2011 Sarah Quigley.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 978-1-443-41311-4
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Originally published by Random House New Zealand: 2011
First published in Canada by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in this original trade paperback edition: 2012
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Quigley, Sarah
The conductor / Sarah Quigley.
ISBN 978-1-44341-309-1
I. Title.
PR9639.3.Q84C85 2012 823’.914 C2012-906064-X
Text design: Megan van Staden
RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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