JONATHAN WEBB CLOSE INFO

THE SECRET HISTORY

Full length: 58:28

An audio interpretation of Donna Tartt’s 1992 novel, The Secret History. The absence of character dialogue and spoken narration is turned to an aesthetic advantage; allowing place, character and narrative to emerge from a continuous stream of musical moments. The result is an atmospheric audio journey that moves seamlessly between the main character’s inner and outer world.

The story that Richard Papen has to tell is of a year at a New England college that changed his life forever. His class-driven yearning for social privilege and intellectual rigour is fulfilled when he is accepted into the college’s élite inner circle: five students, sophisticated and self-assured, chosen by the inspiring and charismatic professor of classics to debate aesthetics and to search for truth through the discipline of his beloved ancient Greek. Chronicling the spiral fall from innocence of the young scholars, this remarkable novel seduces with its storytelling and its erudition. The Secret History is a richly-textured, hypnotic novel of gilded youth corrupted by its own moral arrogance. (Viking)