top of page

The story goes like this: on a freezing winter night in 1941, a new piece of chamber music was performed to a crowd of prisoners of war on a three-stringed cello, clarinet, violin and pub piano with sticky keys. It was the premiere of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps. 

Listeners since then have been captivated by the ecstatic music and mythology of Messiaen’s masterpiece. Michael Symmons Roberts’ own lifelong fascination with the Quartet– having chanced upon it in a record shop in his late teens and fallen in love with its title - leads him on a quest to understand its enigmatic power. His fascination – at times frustration – with Messiaen’s vision opens into an exploration of grief, of personal faith and doubt, of the end of time and what may lie beyond it. Interwoven with poetry and wit, this book is an expansive evocation of music, loss, hope and time, seen through the lens of the Quartet's technicolour, apocalyptic vision.

Quartet for the End of Time is a moving, intimate and unforgettable book, attentive to ways of listening – in our noisy world – to birdsong, music, poems and radio silence, and to the call and response that we may find.

 

'I love Michael Symmons Roberts' poetry. He is a religious poet in a secular age. His work is about connection between the things of the spirit and the things of the world. And his work is about transcendence.'

Jeanette Winterson

 

*Signed First Edition

Biography, Memoir, Arts & Culture

Published April 2025
Hardback 304 pages | 222  x 138 mm

Jonathan Cape

 

*Please note if ordering other items in the same basket as Quartet for the End of Time your order will not be dispatched until April 2025, if you require earlier delivery please place a separate order - thank you*

Book - Quartet for the End of Time - Michael Symmons Roberts

£20.00Price
Delivered on publication 17th April 2025
    bottom of page