The Retreat from Moscow - by William Nicholson (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The celebrated author of Shadowlands tells the powerful story of a husband who decides to be truthful in his marriage, and of the wife and son whose lives will never be the same again.

"A finely perceptive, eloquently tender and exquisite new play." --New York

How well do we know the people we marry? Is it wrong to decide it's time to be honest? Is love enough to save a family?

Edward and Alice have been married for thirty-three years. He is a teacher at a boys school, perfectly at home with his daily crossword and lately engrossed in reading about Napoleon's costly invasion of Moscow. She is an observant Catholic, exacting and opinionated, and has been collecting poems about lost love for a new anthology. Jamie, their diffident thirty-two year old son, is visiting for the weekend when Edward announces he has met another woman. With the coiled intensity of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and the embracing empathy of Edward Albee's best family dramas, The Retreat from Moscow shines a breathtakingly natural light on the fallout of a shattered marriage.

Review Quotes

"A finely perceptive, eloquently tender and exquisite new play." --New York

"Riveting.... Subtle and powerful, [with] marvelous emotional complexity." --The New Yorker

"A tense family drama.... Spare, emotionally brutal." --Time Out New York

"A truly devastating piece of theater." --New York Daily News

"The best new play in twenty years.... This perfectly written masterwork shimmers with delicacy and precision." --The Journal News

About the Author

WILLIAM NICHOLSON is the author of the play Shadowlands, which was made into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. He received an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay for Shadowlands and has written numerous other screenplays as well as a forthcoming novel, The Society of Others, and a trilogy of children's fantasy adventure novels. He lives in London.