What's Bred in the Bone

21 hrs. 42 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Robertson Davies

Narrator Mikhail Roslyakov

Robertson Davies is Canada’s leading writer, a master of plot intricacies and riddles, one of the best storytellers of English-language literature. He made it into the Booker shortlist; near the end of his life he was almost awarded the Nobel Prize—but even remaining forever among the candidates, he earned the status of a world classic. His “Deptford Trilogy” (“The Fifth Character,” “Manticore,” “A World of Wonders”), which launched the “Canadian breakthrough” in world literature, is already well known to Russian readers—now it’s time for the “Cornish Trilogy.” It begins with “Rebellious Angels,” and continues with “What’s in the Bones” (this Davies novel is the one that reached the Booker short list).

Here we offer a secret biography of Francis Cornish, a wealthy patron and collector—told by the recording angel Radveriil (“he isn’t just a common scribe: he’s an angel of poetry and ruler of the muses”) and by an angel of biographies, Zadkiil the Small (“it was he who intervened when Abraham planned to sacrifice Isaac; so he is also an angel of mercy”). And in this biography, anything can happen: mastering drawing basics from a self-teaching guide and in a mortuary; studying at Oxford and a tragically comic, hastily arranged marriage; service in intelligence and forging paintings of old masters for the noblest reasons; as well as family secrets in all their variety.

The secret background of many events was known only to Francis’s mentor, the famous restorer Signor Saracini—and, of course, to the angels. But as the old proverb says, what is “laid in the bones” can’t be driven out of the flesh…

1. The Rebel Angels (narrated by Sergey Kirsanov) 2. What's Bred in the Bone 3. Lyre of Orpheus (narrated by Sergey Kirsanov)