Dancer - Softcover

Dancer, like Colum McCann's previous novels This Side of Brightness and Songdogs, is an elegant weave of historical fact and fictional imagining. Here his central character is the late, great, Rudolf Nureyev--the Soviet dancer who defected to the West at the height of the Cold War, partnered Margot Fonteyn and became ballet's first international male superstar. The "real" Nureyev remains an enigmatic, even iconic figure--as infamous for his petulance, lavish lifestyle, voracious sexual appetite and tragic AIDS-related death as for his dancing. McCann wisely eschews a straightforward account of Rudolf's outrageous life. His sympathetic portrait of the priapic star, which seems oddly weak on dance itself but certainly has scenes to rival The Satyricon, is ingeniously discursive. Nureyev is often more omnipresent than actually present--his story related through a serious of diary entries, reports and different narrative perspectives and voices, including the dancer's own. (On occasions, he even briefly drops from view entirely and the travails of his family, friends and his mentors, the Vasilevas, come to the fore.)

Divided into four loosely chronological sections, the novel spans the length of Nureyev's dancing career, opening in Stalin's war-ravaged Russia, where the young Rudolf earned sugar lumps for entertaining wounded soldiers, and closing with his last sickly, performance and a final, fleeting, visit home. Exile and displacement are really the chief themes of the book and McCann's Nureyev is a man scarred and agitated by the decision to abandon his homeland. "I dance", he notes at one point, "so much--too much--in order not to think of home". McCann seems to imply, however, that it is his disapproving father, who never saw him dance, who fuelled his relentless ambition. Forays into cod-Freudian psychoanalysis aside, this gripping reinvention of Nureyev, rich in period detail and characterisation, is well conceived, marvellously wrought and eminently readable. --Travis Elborough

'The theme of towering celebrity and its attendant vacuity is very well done.' (Chris Power THE TIMES)

'DANCER overflows with vibrant detail and evocative description.....McCann's books has a tremendous amount of life and energy.' (THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY)

McCann has achieved a tour de force in his re-imagined life of Rudolf Nureyev..... McCann spins a verbal rhapsody out of Nureyev's passions and longings, by turns soulful, flamboyant, in your face. (Brian Hennigan THE HERALD)

'Whether describing the Russian stepppe or New York's bathhouses, McCann's versatility is breathtaking.' (Elena Seymenliyska THE GUARDIAN)

McCann's fictionalised biography of ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev met with wide critical acclaim on its January publication and its availability in paperback will open up this remarkable story to a new audience' (HEAT)

'a mesmerising novel' (THE OBSERVER)

McCann's remarkable novel...... McCann's prose - nimble, lyrical and wispy - does full justice to the tragic story of a dancer who was the glory of his generation (THE SUNDAY TIMES)

'it's a strikingly original one (book), and as apparently effortless as one of Fonteyn's pirouettes or Nureyev's leaps into space. (Arminta Wallace THE IRISH TIMES)

a truly extraordinary novel (FAST FORWARD)

this is a brilliant portrait of an artist who could soar heavenwards on clay feet. (SUNDAY INDEPENDENT)