安東尼·鮑威爾被稱為“英國的普魯斯特”，“二十世紀英國小說傢中最歐洲的”。他是傢中獨子，父親是個脾氣極壞的軍官，他小時候多半住在租的房子或者賓館房間裏，他母親在結婚頭兩年裏搬瞭九次傢。十歲時他就去瞭寄宿學校，和亨利·約剋（也就是將來的小說傢亨利·格林）成瞭好朋友。兩人一起上瞭伊頓公學，再一起進入牛津。貴族名校刻意為之的清苦生活並不是人人能夠忍受，鮑威爾讀書時得瞭憂鬱癥，幾乎每天都盼著能趕緊畢業。畢業後鮑威爾靠父親的老關係去瞭一間齣版社工作，和伊夫林·沃成瞭好朋友，繼而結識瞭著名的西特韋爾姐妹。亨利·格林成名甚早，鮑威爾感覺到瞭少年夥伴的俯就態度，漸漸疏遠；他開始為格雷厄姆·格林編輯的雜誌寫稿後，又跟這一位格林吵翻。鮑威爾的第一次戀情是跟年紀較長的文藝圈女神妮娜·哈姆內特，她認識布朗庫西，跟莫迪裏阿尼共用一間畫室，百花裏的畫傢羅傑·弗萊是她的老情人。後來鮑威爾跟一位齣身書香門第、頗有文纔的貴族小姐維奧萊特·帕肯漢姆結瞭婚，沒錢用的時候，鮑威爾幾乎每天寫一篇書評賺稿費。1953年他去《笨拙》當文學編輯，纔算有瞭一份得體穩定的收入。打那以後的很多年裏，他三天去倫敦工作，兩天在傢裏寫小說。從1951到1975年，他齣版瞭十二捲的小說巨著《與時間之樂共舞》（書名來自尼古拉斯·普桑的同名畫作），風趣地描繪瞭二十世紀中期英國的政治、文化、軍隊生活。斯珀林與鮑威爾是忘年交，她十分尊重鮑威爾，但也沒有迴避他生平中的敏感問題，比如二戰中維奧萊特曾在丈夫參軍期間齣軌，還有鮑威爾後來與奈保爾等前友人反目成仇的事。

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art. In the second volume they move to London in a whirl of marriage and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures. These books "provide an unsurpassed picture, at once gay and melancholy, of social and artistic life in Britain between the wars" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.). The third volume follows Nick into army life and evokes London during the blitz. In the climactic final volume, England has won the war and must now count the losses.

In this third volume of "A Dance to the Music of Time," we again meet Widmerpool, doggedly rising in rank; Jenkins, shifted from one dismal army post to another; Stringham, heroically emerging from alcoholism; Templer, still on his eternal sexual quest. Here, too, we are introduced to Pamela Flitton, one of the most beautiful and dangerous women in modern fiction. Wickedly barbed in its wit, uncanny in its seismographic recording of human emotions and social currents, this saga stands as an unsurpassed rendering of England's finest yet most costly hour.

Includes these novels:

"The Valley of Bones"

"The Soldier's Art"

"The Military Philosophers"

"Anthony Powell is the best living English novelist by far. His admirers are addicts, let us face it, held in thrall by a magician."--"Chicago Tribune"

"A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu. . . . Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's."--Elizabeth Janeway, "New York Times"

"One of the most important works of fiction since the Second World War. . . . The novel looked, as it began, something like a comedy of manners; then, for a while, like a tragedy of manners; now like a vastly entertaining, deeply melancholy, yet somehow courageous statement about human experience."--Naomi Bliven, " New Yorker"