{"title":"Wallace Fields","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"fastovski-s-tales-of-hampstead-book-wallace-fields-9781398497566","title":"Fastovski's Tales of Hampstead","description":"Imagine that Isaac Babel's Cossacks wassail together with Runyonesque Liverpool Jews outside the plate-glass window of a Hampstead caf  where a Klezmer band is playing to a packed and tea-drinking congregation of jazzmen, Hasidic scholars, surrealists, old soldiers, and retired strippers; and you have the tone and temperature of this unique and unclassifiable memoir - no, not memoir, more a stream-of-consciousness novella - no, not a novella but a piece of autobiographical fiction - no, not autobiography but a picaresque drama conquered from the unreliable and fertile brain of the eponymous Fastovski. \u003cbr\u003eAnd who is Fastovski? Is he real or invented? Is he perhaps the alter-ego of real-life jazz pianist, Klezmer swinger, big band leader and flaneur, Wallace Fields, who stares at us from the book's frontispiece in shades, Diaghilev coat and moustache, over a cup of strong black coffee? Fastovski's not telling and anyway, who cares. \u003cbr\u003eThis is a book to be devoured, disseminated, denounced, and delighted in. It belongs to all who think art and life are one and that the Arch-Savant of Canterbury, Issy Bonn, Rashid the Manic Berber Chef of NW3, and Mrs Karl Popper, have an equal claim on history. I haven't had such a good time since I shared Sir Ralph Richardson's motorbike with a parrot and a striking grandmother clock. \u003cbr\u003ePiers Plowright\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003eAugust 2008","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49752926257425,"sku":"NGR9781398497566","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1398497568.jpg?v=1751336778"},{"product_id":"fastovski-s-tales-of-hampstead-book-wallace-fields-9781398497559","title":"Fastovski's Tales of Hampstead","description":"Imagine that Isaac Babel's Cossacks wassail together with Runyonesque Liverpool Jews outside the plate-glass window of a Hampstead caf  where a Klezmer band is playing to a packed and tea-drinking congregation of jazzmen, Hasidic scholars, surrealists, old soldiers, and retired strippers; and you have the tone and temperature of this unique and unclassifiable memoir - no, not memoir, more a stream-of-consciousness novella - no, not a novella but a piece of autobiographical fiction - no, not autobiography but a picaresque drama conquered from the unreliable and fertile brain of the eponymous Fastovski. \u003cbr\u003eAnd who is Fastovski? Is he real or invented? Is he perhaps the alter-ego of real-life jazz pianist, Klezmer swinger, big band leader and flaneur, Wallace Fields, who stares at us from the book's frontispiece in shades, Diaghilev coat and moustache, over a cup of strong black coffee? Fastovski's not telling and anyway, who cares. \u003cbr\u003eThis is a book to be devoured, disseminated, denounced, and delighted in. It belongs to all who think art and life are one and that the Arch-Savant of Canterbury, Issy Bonn, Rashid the Manic Berber Chef of NW3, and Mrs Karl Popper, have an equal claim on history. I haven't had such a good time since I shared Sir Ralph Richardson's motorbike with a parrot and a striking grandmother clock. \u003cbr\u003ePiers Plowright\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003eAugust 2008","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49752943067409,"sku":"NGR9781398497559","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51707044233489,"sku":"GOR014371428","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/139849755X.jpg?v=1751050941"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-ie\/collections\/author-books-by-wallace-fields.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}