Julian Barnes’ novel The Noise of Time is a fictional narrative, recounting the relationship between Stalin’s Soviet Union and Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. “If the plan to take a worker from the coal face and turn him into a composer of symphonies did not exactly come to pass, something of the reverse happened. A composer was expected to increase his output just as a coal miner was, and his music was expected to warm hearts just as a miner’s coal warmed bodies” (Julian Barnes). You can read the full review here.