![]() On its face, the book examines the route by which Doyle came to Edajli’s rescue. George is a humble solicitor and the casualty of a vicious miscarriage of justice – wrongfully convicted and incarcerated in 1903, he is the Dreyfus to Arthur’s Zola. Named after the Staffordshire village in which they occurred, the Great Wyrley Outrages offer the spark for Barnes’ two tales – a narrative double helix twisting the lives of Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji into proximity.Īrthur is, of course, the famous creator of Sherlock Holmes. ![]() But shorn of that book’s souped-up, highbrow experiments, “Arthur and George” gains a warmth and humility that radiates from its first pages.Īround the turn of the century, and considered its version of France’s Dreyfus Affair, a string of animal mutilations enveloped Britain in scandal. Like “Flaubert’s Parrot,” Arthur and George enlarges and bedecks a moment of history with the ornaments of his imagination. ![]() While Julian Barnes’ work is generally feted for its oh-so-clever innovations and clanging forward motion, his new novel is – both in milieu and manner – an august voyage backward. ![]()
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