The Waves
€0,00
First published in 1931, The Waves is Virginia Woolf's most radical experiment in fiction, following six friends — Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis — from childhood into old age. Rather than unfolding through conventional narration, their lives emerge through a sequence of lyrical soliloquies, each revealing a distinct consciousness, temperament and way of seeing the world. Their voices are interwoven with recurring descriptions of the sea and the changing light of day, creating a continuous dialogue between human experience and the rhythms of nature.
As the six characters move through friendship, desire, ambition, loss and the passage of time, Woolf explores the instability of identity and the elusive boundaries between individual lives. Written with an extraordinary musicality, the novel dissolves the distinction between prose and poetry, transforming the traditional novel into something closer to a symphony of voices. An essential work of literary Modernism, The Waves represents the culmination of Woolf's experiments with consciousness and remains one of the most distinctive achievements of twentieth-century fiction.
From the book
“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
On The Waves
“A singularly interesting philosophic novel, dealing with the minds, rather than the actions, of six characters.”
— The New Yorker, 7 November 1931