Free Gestures Authored By H.S. Bhabra Available In EPub

book is slow going, took me a while to commit to it, but worth every minute, A very postWW I and WW II book skipping over the interwar period, A young diplomat whose two older brothers died in the War has his first posting, to Venice at the beginning of the Fascist era, He really has no clue about the political situation, and what the rise of Fascism means and will mean, The descriptions of Venice are meandering and beautiful, as are the writing about the intense and meaningful friendships Jeremy Burnham makes, There is a lot of mystery and misunderstanding with a for me very much surprise ending, But this is in no way a thriller or "mystery, " Rather a long historical love story about friendship and the end of a way of life, This book is a slow one to read but worth persisting, The settings, Venice in thes and postwar Amsterdam, are fascinating, the mystery of the characters he meets is only revealed at the end and the character of Jeremy Burnham, a British Consul and the Gestures's narrator, is intriguing.

It also gives an insight into those difficult years, in preFascist Italy and brutal postwar Europe, It took me three weeks to read but was worth the effort, Gestures is a novel, written as the autobiography of one Jeremy Burnham, career diplomat and gentleman, who in hisrd year sets down his life story.
It begins in the Venice of the twenties, just as the Fascists are taking over the government and ends in wartorn Amsterdam, desperate and destitute after the Allied victory, As I read Gestures, I was transported to the Venice its elegance, mystery, and intrigue, Bhabra's writes about power politics, antisemitism, society as it is and as it should aspire to be, It is a study of mankind elevated, fallen, and struggling, The complexity of the work riveted and inspired me, My only regret is that Bhabra died early in his life, How I would have loved to know more about this author and to have read more of his work, A quite extraordinary novel, despite it's less than contemporary theme, utterly believable and just about impossible to put down and I ached for more, Beautifully

written, it is without a doubt one of the most impressive novels that I have read in quite some time, Excellent writing. Bhabra is superb at creating a time and place Venice, Amsterdam etc, and a period: the Fascist rise in Italy in the twenties, as well as the immediate year or two after the Second World War, I hadn't thought about the awful devastation that the victors had to deal withhow to keep European nations from starving in the first winter, for example, or deal with destroyed infrastructure.


Rivaling the war in its devastation was the power that corruption can wield on vulnerable people, All too often true, but that part of the book depressed me,

I did enjoy the window into diplomacy during this period, The protagonist is excellently portrayed as either "a representative of everything that was best in Britain" or "a child of hell who battened on the healthy flanks of radical, syndicalist Britain.
" Take your choice. Luscious. Makes me want to don a big hat and move to fascistera Venice, Courageous, gently tragic, humanistic.

I can't understand how this, the fictional memoir of anyearold, with all of the wisdom one would expect therein, could have been published by the time the author was.
It would be breathtaking if it had been written by anyearold, but it seem really an impossible feat for someone so young, How did he do it

This book was like a second life unfolding in my mind during the days I read it, It is just like life, and when dealing with death just like what I imagine the end of life to be, Bhabra takes on all possible themes: man vs, world, man vs. other, man vs. self, man in the world, the world, the world as it should have been, the world as it was perhaps and still should be, . . What an elegant book, harking back to a time of sheer civility and normalcy, maintained at all cost while the world is collapsing into uncharted madness, Set in the life of a quiet British diplomat, first in prewar Venicewith the evil rumblings of Mussolini's fascism just beginning, and then on to postwar Amsterdam, as the hunt for collaborators and war criminals heats up among the chaos of a Europe in immediate recovery from war.
The story was engaging, and the writing even better I'm keeping this one to reread a second time, Brilliant novel tragic that an author of such talent is no longer, I enjoyed Bhabra's writing style, though it got really sluggish after the first/and didn't pick up until the last/, In fact, I can't remember much of anything in the middle, The ending was intriguing and now I'm thinking about digging out my copy of Faust which is what he originally wanted to call the book, Thought provoking. Difficult reading. Stilted old fashioned language. Bears rereading.year old, Jeremy Burnham, remembering his diplomatic career and the story/mystery ofminor characters in his life, Anthony Manet, Eva Altdoorp, Elena Altdoorp, Jayne Carlysle, Theme of human enterprise more powerful/important than humans I almost didn't stick with this book, but the characters Anthony, Jane, Eva, Jeremy, Elena, etc, settings Vienna, Amsterdam, and times the devastations of The Great War and WW II as Bhabra told this tale in minute and passionate detail compelled me, I began reading it aboutweeks ago and just finished it! Hargurchet Singh Bhabra June,June,was a British Asian writer and broadcaster who settled in Canada, Bhabra was born in Mumbai, India and moved to England with his family in, The family eventually settled in Beare Green, Surrey, Fromto, Bhabra attended Reigate Grammar School,He was the only boy of Asian origin in the school, was highly regarded by his teachers, and an accomplished actor in school productions such as Much Ado about Nothing.
Bhabra worked for six years in financial advertisng in the City of London, In, he resigned to complete Gestures, a novel on which he had been working for years, He travelled and worked as a correspondent for a few years, which provided material for his career as Hargurchet Singh Bhabra June,June,was a British Asian writer and broadcaster who settled in Canada.
Bhabra was born in Mumbai, India and moved to England with his family in, The family eventually settled in Beare Green, Surrey, Fromto, Bhabra attended Reigate Grammar School,He was the only boy of Asian origin in the school, was highly regarded by his teachers, and an accomplished actor in school productions such as Much Ado about Nothing.
Bhabra worked for six years in financial advertisng in the City of London, In, he resigned to complete Gestures, a novel on which he had been working for years, He travelled and worked as a correspondent for a few years, which provided material for his career as a writer of fiction, under his own name and also as A M Kabal and John Ford.
Gestures won a Betty Trask Award in, It has been described thus: "With extraordinary force and subtlety, Gestures conducts the 'funeral rite over an entire way of life, a liberal, human, European culture which has finally disappeared', The lines could stand as an epitaph for Bhabra himself, Infused with his own erudition, elegance and empathy, it was also and to a great degree an expression of his own sense of displacement, " Indeed, although he published in quick succession three thrillers The Adversaryand Bad Money, and Zero Yield the next few years were spent largely on travels to Egypt, Mexico and Latin America.
In, Bhabra was awarded the first Fulbright Chandler Fellowship in Spy and Detective Fiction Writing, This prize included a post as writer in residence at the University of California, Los Angeles for one year, Bhabra stayed on in Los Angeles fromto, hoping to earn money as a scriptwriter, That did not work out, however, though his fund of esoteric knowledge did help him win a handsome sum as a contestant on a television quiz show, Jeopardy, an accomplishment of which he remained proud.
While there, he also developed an obsession with climbing bridges, which led to his arrest while making an assault on the Golden Gate, San Francisco, Bhabra also taught at Amherst College in Massachusetts, InBhabra moved to Toronto, where his parents now lived, In Canada, Bhabra was perceived as an Asian Canadian writer and broadcaster, He taught at the Humber School for Writers at Humber College and then joined TVOntario as co host, with Marni Jackson, of the book show Imprint fromto, Knowledgeable and intelligent, Bhabra had interests ranging from food and fashion to films and books, His contract with Imprint was not renewed after theseason, After leaving Imprint, Bhabra struggled to make ends meet with occasional freelance magazine and television work, Television projects included the show Starting Up!, about the challenges and rewards of opening a business, which he created and produced for TVO, Bhabra also embarked on an ambitious fiction quartet: South, West, North, and East, By the spring of, Bhabra had completed a draft of the first chapter of the first novel, South, a draft which failed to lead to the publishing contract he hoped for and much needed, in order to support himself financially.
When opportunities at TVO dried up, Bhabra joined TFO, the French language channel, where he worked, for a short time, on a new arts show, Ôzone, Bhabra left TFO in lateas a result of artistic differences, He was sustained, during these years, by the support of his partner, Vee Ledson, daughter of educator Sidney Ledson, Bhabra had encouraged Ledson to pursue her dream of running her own school, Laurel Academy, which she established in Toronto in, OnJune, a week before histh birthday, he killed himself by jumping off the Prince Edward Viaduct on Toronto's Bloor Street, Alas, none around him knew of his debilitating writer's block in the months and weeks leading up to his death, Bhabra had led some of those close sitelink,