As touching as a well-made melody * Daily Telegraph * Terrific . . . part political allegory, part dream and part deeply tender meditation on grief * Metro * Impeccably wrought * TLS * The book retains a lingering power -- Anthony Cummins * Observer * A powerful novel about music, human nature and poverty . . . only Kazuo Ishiguro rivals Crace's range in terms of emotional power and unusual subject matter * Financial Times * Exquisite . . . another choice example of this twice-Booker-nominated English writer's unique gift * National * Ambitious, powerful * Big Issue * Jim Crace writes with great flair and inimitable imagination . . . The Melody is lyrical and tender . . . one of Britain's most distinctive and accomplished novelists * Financial Times * The Melody is at its most poignant on the subject of growing old . . . every sentence is packed with Crace's characteristic lyricism * The Times * Hypnotic and powerful . . . enchanting and disconcerting * Irish Times * Takes its place among his finest [novels] . . . grippingly symbolic and intensely real * Guardian * Seductively atmospheric . . . deeply moving * Daily Mail * Strange, unsettling, brilliant . . . one of our most original and inventive novelists * Observer *

From the Man Booker shortlisted author of Harvest. Alfred Busi, famed in his town for his music and songs, is mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days in the large villa he has always called home. Then one night Busi is attacked by a creature he disturbs as it raids the contents of his larder. Busi is convinced that what assaulted him was no animal, but a child, `innocent and wild', and his words fan the flames of old rumour - of an ancient race of people living in the bosk surrounding the town - and new controversy: the town's paupers, the feral wastrels at its edges, must be dealt with. Once and for all. Lyrical and warm, intimate and epic, The Melody by Jim Crace tracks the few days that will see Busi and the town he loves altered irrevocably. This is a story about grief and ageing, about reputation and the loss of it, about love and music and the peculiar way myth seeps into real life. And it is a political novel too - a rallying cry to protect those we persecute. 'The Melody takes its place among his finest [novels] . . . an ecological fable for modern times' Guardian