The Biographer's Tale (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780375725081)

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession comes an ingenious novel about love and literary sleuthing: a dazzling fiction woven out of one man's search for certainty.

"Elegant ... witty ... intelligent." --The Washington Post

Here is the story of Phineas G. Nanson, a disenchanted graduate student who decides to escape the world of postmodern literary theory and immerse himself in the messiness of "real life" by writing a biography of a great biographer. In a series of adventures that are by turns intellectual and comic, scientific and sensual, Phineas tracks his subject to the deserts of Africa and the maelstrom of the Arctic. Along the way he comes to rely on two women, one of whom may be the guide he needs out of the dizzying labyrinth of his research and back into his own life. A tantalizing yarn of detection and desire, The Biographer's Tale is a provocative look at "truth" in biography and our perennial quest for certainty.

Author: A. S. Byatt
ISBN-10: 0375725083
ISBN-13: 9780375725081
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Language: English
Published: 12/04/2001
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.61lbs
Size: 8.03h x 5.17w x 0.65d

Review Citation(s):
New York Times 12/09/2001 pg. 32
Entertainment Weekly 02/22/2002 pg. 141