The Thief of Time
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3.4 • 18 Ratings
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
'Extraordinary.... The various strands of the story are resolved with a stylish twist and genuine warmth.' The Sunday Express
'A minor masterpiece of organisation and historical sampling.' Time Out
Matthieu Zela has lived his life well. In fact, he's lived several lives well. Because Matthew Zela's life is characterised by one amazing fact: his body stopped ageing before the end of the eighteenth century.
Starting in 1758, a young Matthieu flees Paris after witnessing his mother's brutal murder. His only companions are his younger brother Tomas and one true love, Dominique Sauvet. The story of his life takes us from the French Revolution to 1920s Hollywood, from the Great Exhibition to the Wall Street Crash, and by the end of the twentieth century, Matthieu has been an engineer, a rogue, a movie mogul, a soldier, a financier, a lover to many, a cable TV executive and much more besides.
Brilliantly weaving history and personal experience, this is a dazzling story of love, murder, missed chances, treachery - and redemption.
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What readers are saying about Thief of Time:
***** 'Beautifully written with a story that will stay with me for a very long time.'
***** 'Captivating from start to finish!'
***** 'Boyne is a born storyteller.'
John Boyne's upcoming novel, THE ECHO CHAMBER, is available for pre-order now.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Published in the U.K. before his hits Crippen and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, this novel sails similarly historical currents with mixed results. Matthieu Zela is 256 years old in 1999, but doesn't look a day over 50. (Bafflingly to himself, too he simply stopped aging.) Loquacious Matthieu crisscrosses the centuries with wry, autobiographical narration, moving from his current incarnation as a satellite TV entrepreneur in London to his coming-of-age in the 1750s, when he leaves Paris for England with his young half-brother Tomas in tow and meets his one true love, Dominique Sauvet. Matthieu's one deep regret, however, isn't romance-related: of the 10 generations of Thomases descended from his brother, each has had his life cut short, "either by his own stupidity or by the machinations of the times." Matthieu's current nephew, Tommy, a wildly popular soap opera star, is a heroin addict and not long for this world. Matthieu vows to prevent his too-early demise. In between, Matthieu shares too predictable highlights from his brushes with world events (the French Revolution, the 1929 stock market crash, etc.) and famous people (Pope Pius IX, Charlie Chaplin, the Rosenbergs). The picaresque nature of this hopscotch through history's hot spots suits Boyne's big-canvas talent, but Matthieu, in his unexplained immortality, is more like a storytelling device than a fully realized character. This novel is not a follow-up but a practice run.
Customer Reviews
The thief of time
Enjoyed the book as a concept, some chapters more than others. Looking forward to getting through his library.